The Routledge International Handbook of Islamophobia 0815353758, 9780815353751

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The Routledge International Handbook of Islamophobia

Islamophobic hate crimes have increased significantly following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and 7/7. More recently, the rhetoric surrounding Trump’s election and presidency, Brexit, the rise of far-right groups and ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks worldwide have promoted a climate where Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiments have become ‘legitimised’. The Routledge International Handbook of Islamophobia provides a comprehensive single-volume collection of key readings in Islamophobia. Consisting of 32 chapters accessibly written by scholars, policy makers and practitioners, it seeks to examine the nature, extent, implications of, and responses to Islamophobic hate crime both nationally and internationally. This volume will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Criminology, Victimology, Sociology, Social Policy, Religious Studies, Law and related Social Sciences subjects. It will also appeal to scholars, policy makers and practitioners working in and around the areas of Islamophobic hate crimes. Irene Zempi is a Lecturer in Criminology at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Imran Awan is a Professor of Criminology and Deputy Director of the Centre for Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University, UK.

The Routledge International Handbook of Islamophobia

Edited by Irene Zempi and Imran Awan

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business  2019 selection and editorial matter, Irene Zempi and Imran Awan; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Irene Zempi and Imran Awan to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-8153-5375-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-13555-9 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK

Contents

Notes on contributors

ix

Introduction Irene Zempi and Imran Awan

1

PART I

Conceptualising Islamophobia

9

  1 The debate over the utility and precision of the term “Islamophobia” Nathan C. Lean

11

  2 Islamophobia as the racialisation of Muslims Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood

18

  3 Islamophobia as the hidden hand of structural and cultural racism Tahir Abbas

32

  4 A multidimensional model of understanding Islamophobia: a comparative practical analysis of the US, Canada, UK and France Saied Reza Ameli and Arzu Merali

42

  5 Mapping and mainstreaming Islamophobia: between the illiberal and liberal Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter

58

  6 The psychology of hate crime offenders who target Muslims: who could be a hate crime offender? Jane Prince

71

  7 ‘Your pain is my pain’: examining the community impacts of Islamophobic hate crimes Jenny L. Paterson, Mark A. Walters and Rupert Brown

84

v

Contents

PART II

Patterns of Islamophobia through a European lens

97

  8 A historical perspective: secularism, ‘white backlash’ and Islamophobia in France Olivier Esteves

99

  9 Islamophobia and the Left in France Timothy Peace

110

10 The gendered dimension of Islamophobia in Belgium Amina Easat-Daas

123

11 Islamophobia in Ireland: challenges from below? James Carr

135

12 The racialised and Islamophobic framing of the Rotherham and Rochdale child sexual abuse scandals Waqas Tufail

147

13 Discrimination against Muslims in Scotland Stefano Bonino

161

14 Islamophobia and the Muslim student: disciplining the intellect Tania Saeed

175

15 Islamophobia in UK universities Hareem Ghani and Ilyas Nagdee

188

16 Islamophobia in Greece: the ‘Muslim threat’ and the panic about Islam Alexandros Sakellariou

198

17 Religious dimension of Polish fears of Muslims and Islam Konrad Pędziwiatr

212

18 Islamophobia and the quest for European identity in Poland Katarzyna Górak-Sosnowska and Marta Pachocka

225

PART III

Patterns of Islamophobia through a global lens

237

19 Islamophobia and the US ideological infrastructure of white supremacy Louise Cainkar

239

vi

Contents

20 Muslim American youth and post-9/11 Islamophobia: Interfaith activism and the limits of religious multiculturalism 252 Sunaina Maira 21 Diasporas and dystopias on the beach: Burkini wars in France and Australia Shakira Hussein, Scheherazade Bloul and Scott Poynting

263

22 Breaking the peace: the Quebec City terrorist attack Barbara Perry

275

23 Understanding Islamophobia in Southeast Asia Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman

286

24 Islamophobia in US education Shabana Mir and Loukia K. Sarroub

298

PART IV

Responding to Islamophobia

311

25 Micro-level management of Islamophobia: negotiation, deflection and resistance Fatima Khan and Gabe Mythen

313

26 Race, racism, Islamophobia in the media: journalists’ perceptions and Muslim responses Amir Saeed

325

27 Flying while Muslim: should we be concerned about Islamophobia at the airport? Leda Blackwood

340

28 Far-right Islamophobia: from ideology to ‘mainstreamed’ hate crimes Matthew Feldman and Paul Stocker

352

29 Islamophobia and the radical right in Europe: nostalgia or alternative utopia? Aristotle Kallis

363

30 Terrorism, hate speech and ‘cumulative extremism’ on Facebook: a case study Mark Littler and Kathy Kondor

374

vii

Contents

31 The police challenges in responding to Islamophobic hate crime Paul Giannasi

385

32 Governmental responses to Islamophobia in the UK: a two-decade retrospective 397 Chris Allen Index 408

viii

Notes on contributors

Tahir Abbas is an Assistant Professor of Security Studies at the Institute of Security and Global

Affairs, Leiden University, The Hague, Netherlands. Chris Allen is an Associate Professor of Hate Studies at the University of Leicester, UK. Saied Reza Ameli is a Professor of Communications and North American Studies at the University of Tehran, Iran. Leda Blackwood is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Bath, UK. Scheherazade Bloul is a PhD Candidate at Deakin University, Australia. Stefano Bonino is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at eCrime, University of Trento, Italy. Rupert Brown is a Professor of Social Psychology at Sussex University, UK. Louise Cainkar is an Associate Professor of Social Welfare and Justice at Marquette University in Milwaukee, US. James Carr is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Limerick, Ireland. Amina Easat-Daas is a Project Officer at the University of Leeds, UK. Olivier Esteves is an Assistant Professor in British studies at Lille University, France. Matthew Feldman is the Director of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, UK. Hareem Ghani was the National Union of Students Women’s Officer, UK between 2016–2018. Paul Giannasi is the Cross-Government Hate Crime Programme Manager, UK. Katarzyna Górak-Sosnowska is an Associate Professor at Warsaw School of Economics, Poland. Shakira Hussein is a Researcher at the National Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies,

University of Melbourne, Australia.

ix

Notes on contributors

Aristotle Kallis is a Professor of History at Keele University, UK. Fatima Khan is a Lecturer in Criminology at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Kathy Kondor is a Researcher at the University of Huddersfield, UK. Nathan C. Lean is a writer, researcher, and public speaker whose work focuses on Islam, Islamophobia, the Middle East, and Muslim–Christian relations. Mark Littler is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Policing at the University of Huddersfield, UK. Sunaina Maira is a Professor of Asian American Studies at University of California, US. Nasar Meer is Professor of Race, Identity and Citizenship at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Arzu Merali is Head of Research at the Islamic Human Rights Commission, UK. Shabana Mir is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at American Islamic College,

Chicago, US. Tariq Modood is a Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy at the University of

Bristol, UK. Aurelien Mondon is a Lecturer in French Studies at the University of Bath, UK. Gabe Mythen is a Professor in Sociology at the University of Liverpool, UK. Ilyas Nagdee is the National Union of Students Black Students’ Officer, UK. Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Malaysia

Program/Seminar Series on Muslim Societies in Asia at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Marta Pachocka is an Assistant Professor at the Warsaw School of Economics, Poland. Jenny L. Paterson is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Teesside University, UK. Timothy Peace is a Lord Kelvin Adam Smith Fellow at the University of Glasgow, UK. Konrad Pędziwiatr is an Assistant Professor at Cracow University of Economics, Poland. Barbara Perry is a Professor of Criminology at the University of Ontario, Canada. Scott Poynting is an Adjunct Professor at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Jane Prince is a Principal Lecturer in Psychology at the University of South Wales, UK.

x

Notes on contributors

Amir Saeed is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Huddersfield, UK. Tania Saeed is an Assistant Professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS),

Pakistan. Alexandros Sakellariou is a Lecturer in Sociology at Hellenic Open University, Greece. Loukia K. Sarroub is a Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, US. Paul Stocker is a Teacher of History at Chelsea Independent College, UK. Waqas Tufail is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Leeds Beckett University, UK Mark A. Walters is a Professor of Criminal Law and Criminology at Sussex University, UK. Aaron Winter is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of East London, UK.

xi

Introduction Irene Zempi and Imran Awan

Islamophobic hate crimes have increased significantly in the West following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 (usually referred to as 9/11) in the US. As numerous commentators have argued in detail, since 9/11, a particular anxiety towards Muslim ‘others’ has led to suspicion and outright hostility towards Muslims in the West. Following the attacks on 7 July 2005 in the UK (usually referred to as 7/7) these anxieties intensified. Muslims in the UK faced significantly heightened levels of religious and racial hatred, manifested as hate crimes and incidents. More recently, the rhetoric surrounding Donald Trump’s election and presidency, Brexit, and the rise of far-right groups, both nationally and internationally, have promoted a climate where hate crime, and specifically Islamophobic hate crime, have become ‘legitimised’. Also, the rise in Islamophobic attacks following the recent ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks in the UK, France, Belgium and Germany means that it is now an opportune moment for us to turn our attentions to the ways in which this form of hate crime might be understood, measured and addressed at a national and international level. The Routledge International Handbook of Islamophobia provides a comprehensive single-volume collection of key readings in Islamophobia. It consists of 32 chapters accessibly written by scholars, policy makers and practitioners, both established and up and coming. The fact that Islamophobic hate crime is now recognised as a growing social problem means that this type of hate crime is ripe for critical analysis. As such, this is an important and innovative collection that allows readers to understand this phenomenon. In particular, this book seeks to examine the nature, extent, implications of, and responses to Islamophobic hate crime both nationally and internationally. The book also seeks to examine policy responses and examine the effectiveness of policing this form of hate crime. The book is divided into four parts. Part I provides chapters that seek to understand the nature and scope of Islamophobic hate crime. Leading national and international authors use philosophical, theological, sociological, psychological and criminological theories to explain how both the causes and consequences of Islamophobic hate should be understood, not just as a domestic issue but as a global phenomenon. Part II illustrates the dynamics of Islamophobic hate crime through the use of case examples in individual countries in the European context. Part III further illustrates the dynamics of Islamophobic hate crime in the US and in a global context. Finally, Part IV looks at ways in which Islamophobic hate crime can be addressed on 1

I. Zempi and I. Awan

the national and international stage. Chapters in this part examine the potential use of internet regulation and policing. In Chapter 1, Nathan C. Lean outlines the debates over the utility and precision of the term ‘Islamophobia’. The chapter invokes to historical and contemporary examples in order to critically evaluate these debates. The chapter makes the case that persistent efforts to dismantle Islamophobia only serve to exacerbate the problem. It is argued that efforts to dismantle Islamophobia facilitate consequences that target the Muslim community, rendering it susceptible to more hostility on account of a nameless phenomenon of prejudice. In Chapter 2, Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood examine the racialisation of Muslims as a form of Islamophobia. They argue that the implications of sources of hostility towards Muslims are best understood through registers of race and racialisation, an argument that the authors have pioneered within the Islamophobia studies field. Specifically, the first part of the chapter explores the theoretical and normative issues raised by the entanglements between race and religion in relation to Muslims, while the second half of the chapter draws on interview data with journalists and opinion formers. The chapter provides four-fold reasons as to why there may be little sympathy for the notion that Muslim minorities are subject to racism by virtue of their real or perceived ‘Muslimness’. In Chapter 3, Tahir Abbas discusses Islamophobia as the ‘hidden hand of structural and cultural racism’. This chapter outlines key areas where Islamophobia masks deeper structural concerns including education, employment, health and housing in Britain. The chapter provides an analysis of how elite actors use the biopolitical discourse of hyper-masculinity in order to construct a conflict narrative between far-right groups and ‘Muslim extremist’ groups in the UK context. In Chapter 4, Saied Reza Ameli and Arzu Merali offer a typology of Islamophobia, and outline the Multidimensional Model of Understanding Islamophobia (MMUI), drawing on a secondary analysis of data related to Islamophobic behaviour against Muslims in the USA, Canada, UK and France. The MMUI model is discussed in relation to the Domination Hate Model of Intercultural Relations (DHMIR). The DHMIR Model demonstrates how an innocent citizen can turn into a hate crime offender. As the chapter points out, the DHMIR Model does not attempt to justify hate crime offending; rather, it draws attention to a complicated process in which the hate crime offender becomes a passive implementer. In Chapter 5, Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter discuss the concepts of liberal and illiberal Islamophobia. They provide an overview of definitions of Islamophobia and debates in the field, and justify their use of the term Islamophobia over alternatives such as anti-Muslim racism. They also develop the two articulations of Islamophobia (that is, liberal and illiberal Islamophobia), which they propose are essential to providing a comprehensive picture of the current state of racism towards individuals perceived to be Muslim. In Chapter 6, Jane Prince considers the psychology of hate crime offenders who target Muslims and raises the question of ‘who could be a hate crime offender?’ This chapter reviews the existing literature on the psychology of hate crime offenders, the implications of these for preventative and restorative interventions, and offers an analysis of the broader role of social groups in Islamophobic criminal behaviours. The difficulties of addressing and eliminating the causes of Islamophobic hate crime are also considered. In Chapter 7, Jenny L. Paterson, Mark A. Walters and Rupert Brown examine the community impacts of Islamophobic hate crimes. Drawing on a large-scale survey, this chapter provides a quantitative examination of the indirect (community) impacts of hate crimes on members of UK Muslim communities. The study shows that the consequences of Islamophobic hate crime can be far-reaching. Islamophobic hate crimes not only traumatise direct victims but are likely to spread anxiety and anger throughout Muslim communities. Incidents are also likely to impact 2

Introduction

upon individuals’ community involvement and avoidant behaviours, while also damaging their confidence in the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, and the government in tackling Islamophobic hate crime. In Chapter 8, Olivier Esteves offers a historical perspective of French secularism, and explains how French laïcité began to be redefined in the late 1980s in light of the events of The Satanic Verses and the first headscarf affair in France. The chapter shows how public constructions of Islamophobia in France were shaped by these events. The chapter draws on Roubaix’s national labour archives, which helps readers to understand the experiences of Muslims in the labour market in France. The chapter also draws on some excerpts from fieldwork with Muslim social workers, imams and local figures on how they perceive misunderstandings of Islam and Muslims within the French context. In Chapter 9, Timothy Peace discusses Islamophobia and the left in France. This chapter outlines some of the reasons as to why there is a political consensus in France about a ‘Muslim problem’ that needs to be addressed. Indeed, the chapter notes that key reasons include the rise of neo-republicanism and attempts by politicians to appear tough on ‘visible’ difference and multiculturalism in the face of increasing support for the far-right Front National. The chapter also discusses how French Muslims themselves respond to this not just through forms of protest, but also in the courts. The chapter pays attention to the legal framework and the work of NGOS such as the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, which fight to have acts of Islamophobia recognised as hate crimes. In Chapter 10, Amina Easat-Daas examines Islamophobia in Belgium. Specifically, the chapter outlines the underlying mechanisms of the gendered dimensions of Islamophobia in Belgium and demonstrates how historically-rooted narratives contribute to modern-day ‘othering’ of Muslim women in Belgium. It illustrates both the direct and indirect forms of Islamophobia experienced by Belgian Muslim women in light of the national face veil ban, and the recent controversies surrounding wearing the headscarf in the workplace. The chapter concludes with an overview of the ways of tackling gendered Islamophobia as led by self-identified Belgian Muslim women themselves. In Chapter 11, James Carr draws on empirical evidence in order to examine Islamophobia in Ireland. In doing so, the chapter draws on two key studies. Study 1 provides statistical and qualitative insights into anti-Muslim racism in Ireland. Study 2, which was undertaken in partnership with two civil society organisations: the Immigrant Council of Ireland and the Open Society Foundations, also provides insights into experiences of anti-Muslim hostility and discrimination in Ireland. The chapter concludes with a section outlining how Muslim communities in Ireland feel this pernicious phenomenon can be challenged, namely, recognition; inclusion; support and protection. In Chapter 12, Waqas Tufail discusses the racialised and Islamophobic framing of the Rotherham and Rochdale child sexual abuse scandals. It is argued that popular discourses about these scandals have been dominated by representations focusing on race, ethnicity and the dangerous masculinities of Muslim men. The chapter compares and contrasts the representations and discourses of racialised and non-racialised reporting of child sexual abuse and situates the grooming scandals in the context of anti-Muslim racism. In Chapter 13, Stefano Bonino examines discrimination towards Muslims in Scotland. This chapter explores the realities and perceptions of ethno-religious discrimination among Muslims in Scotland with respect to their everyday social interactions with the indigenous Scottish community, contact with police and security officers. It traces the history of discrimination against ethnic minorities in Scotland and particularly focuses on the multifaceted manifestations of anti-Muslim sentiments within a post-9/11 global climate of distrust towards Islam. 3

I. Zempi and I. Awan

It concludes by arguing that the overall life experiences of Muslims in Scotland are more positive than those of their fellow correligionists in England due to a number of political, social and cultural factors. In Chapter 14, Tania Saeed considers how educational institutions, including universities, have been implicated in a counter terrorism agenda, under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, that has placed a ‘statutory’ responsibility on such institutions to report on students perceived to be vulnerable to radicalisation. To this end, the chapter examines how Islamophobia disciplines the Muslim body and mind, where Muslim students are increasingly conscious of their speech and behaviour, engaging in self-censorship. Drawing on a narrative study of 40 Muslim female university students conducted in 2010–2012, and recent reports of Islamophobia in educational institutions, this chapter illustrates how such self-regulation makes Islamophobia more dangerous, where Muslim students are constantly under pressure to appear ‘normal’ and not be misunderstood. In Chapter 15, Hareem Ghani and Ilyas Nagdee discuss Islamophobia in Higher Education drawing on the findings from the research report entitled The Experience of Muslim Students in 2017–18, published by the National Union of Students. This comprehensive piece of work captures Muslim students’ and sabbatical officers’ experiences in colleges and universities throughout the UK. The findings demonstrate that experiences of hate-motivated incidents and crimes are widespread, yet under-reported. In Chapter 16, Alexandros Sakellariou discusses Islamophobia in Greece. Specifically, this chapter examines the main channels through which Islamophobia and anti-Muslim attitudes are being re-produced in the Greek context. In this respect, the chapter also outlines the reasons for Islamophobia in Greece. It also considers whether the recent refugee crisis has influenced the rise of anti-Muslim and Islamophobic attitudes. Drawing on the concepts of moral panics and politics of fear, this chapter argues that Islamophobia has serious implications for religious freedom and equality within the Greek society. In Chapter 17, Konrad Pędziwiatr examines the religious dimension of Islamophobia in Poland. Specifically, this chapter demonstrates that the processes of Muslim ‘Othering’ have been closely linked in Poland with wider socio-political transformations in Polish society. In Chapter 18, Katarzyna Górak-Sosnowska and Marta Pachocka also examine Islamophobia in Poland but from a different perspective, that of Poland’s membership in the EU. In Chapter 19, Louise Cainkar examines Islamophobia in the US. Specifically, this chapter discusses how Islamophobia is increasingly being treated as a form of racism in scholarship on its ideological and structural patterns in the West. The chapter argues that anti-Muslim actions are ideologically supported through claims that American values are superior to those of Muslims, fabricated claims of an inherent global Muslim hatred of Americans, and persistent suggestions that Muslims are morally inferior human beings. Rising hate crimes and recent government policies provide strong evidence that Islamophobia has reached new heights in the United States on both ideological and structural levels. In Chapter 20, Sunaina Maira outlines the ways interfaith activism is produced as a response to Islamophobia and the limits of religious multiculturalism. Drawing on an ethnographic study, conducted in Silicon Valley in northern California between 2007 and 2011, in the South Bay Area and in the nearby cities of Fremont/Hayward that have a large Afghan population, the study explores the political subject-hood of young people targeted in the War on Terror and in the context of neoliberal multiculturalism. The larger project focuses on how these youth turned to rights – especially civil rights and human rights – to respond to Islamophobia, racism, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and how they simultaneously grappled with the limits of rights-based activism. 4

Introduction

In Chapter 21, Shakira Hussein, Scheherazade Bloul and Scott Poynting discuss the issue of the burkini affair in France and Australia. It is argued that continental Europe provides a dystopia for Australian Muslims and Islamophobes alike. The chapter also discusses how the far-right and anti-Muslim populists of both nations blame the accommodation of cultural diversity and the entry of ‘too many Muslims’ for purported corrosion of the national culture. In Chapter 22, Barbara Perry examines Islamophobia in Canada. Specifically, the chapter describes xenophobia and racism, in an era of Donald Trump and far-right French politician Marine Le Pen. The chapter unpacks the ways in which global and ‘home-grown’ xenophobia and anti-Muslim hatred coalesced to provide the climate for elevated rates of anti-Muslim violence. It shows how Trump’s campaign rhetoric and subsequent policy directives have provided one level of influence. It also considers the ways in which conservative politics at the national level in Canada and provincial level in Quebec have provided fertile ground for xenophobia and Islamophobia to take root there. The manifestations of culturally embedded Islamophobia are revealed in consistently negative polling around Islam, and high – and increasing – rates of anti-Muslim hate crime. In Chapter 23, Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman examines Islamophobia in Southeast Asia. Specifically, this chapter argues that Islamophobia in Thailand and Philippines is rooted in Muslim insurgencies, which could be traced to an early colonial policy. First, the chapter examines the current literature on Islamophobia and proposes a conceptual framework from which Islamophobia in the Asian contexts can be understood. Second, the chapter analyses the historical factors for the rise of Islamophobia and the contemporary manifestations of Islamophobia in these societies. Third, the chapter examines the impact of this analysis as a framework in understanding Islamophobia in conflictual areas. It is concluded that the challenge of Islamophobia in both Thailand and Philippines is likely to continue to grow especially in light of the growth of Islamophobia internationally. In Chapter 24, Shabana Mir and Loukia Sarroub examine Islamophobia in US education. In the first part of the chapter they explain how ‘Islamophobia’ has become a social fact of school life for many young people in US public schools. They then present an analysis of the Islamophobia as politically situated in higher education settings. Throughout the chapter, they highlight the ways in which Islamophobia is manifested in US education, the multi-layered damage that this inflicts on educational participants, and the strategies that generate hope for fighting Islamophobia and racism. In Chapter 25, Fatima Khan and Gabe Mythen discuss micro-level management of Islamophobia. This chapter addresses the issue of anti-Muslim victimisation and the intensification of an Islamophobic climate in Britain over the last two decades. Drawing on an empirical study conducted in the northwest of England, this chapter elucidates the multiple ways in which British Muslim identities are negotiated and managed in environments in which their beliefs, values and aspirations are routinely questioned. This chapter also examines how micro level strategies of interactional negotiation allow participants to benefit from hybridity, circumvent potentially risky interactions and resist stereotyping and misperceptions. In Chapter 26, Amir Saeed discusses Muslim responses to Islamophobia in the media. The paper presents empirical evidence from media educators in the UK that implies journalists do not deliberately write racist material. However, it is suggested that this argument does not account for the cultural and ideological factors that influence media coverage of Islam that also echoes how the Western media have routinely represented non-white minority groups historically. The chapter argues that journalists must acknowledge the influence of ‘hidden agendas’ that impact on their reporting of Islam and Muslims. In Chapter 27, Leda Blackwood discusses Islamophobia at the airport drawing on research conducted with airport authorities and British Muslims as well as wider reportage of Muslim 5

I. Zempi and I. Awan

experiences. The chapter argues that the expression ‘flying while Muslim’ is now widely used to capture a set of intimidating and humiliating experiences Muslims report having when travelling in non-Muslim countries. The chapter presents a social psychological analysis of how airport authorities and Muslims themselves understand the nature of Muslims experiences of Islamophobia in the airport; and the consequences for Muslim-authority relations both inside the airport and beyond. In Chapter 28, Matthew Feldman and Paul Stocker examine the nature of anti-Muslim prejudice by different far-right groups, before turning to the issue of their manifestation as hate attacks. The chapter outlines the diverse nature in which ‘Islamoprejudice’ is presented by the far-right, including both conspiratorial anti-Muslim prejudice and the linking of Islam with terrorism. Drawing on the Tell MAMA data, this chapter argues that rather than being mere ‘rhetoric’, far-right Islamophobia has been an important factor in the rise of new forms of far-right extremism. In Chapter 29, Aristotle Kallis examines the relationship between Islamophobia and the radical right in Europe, and considers whether this is nationalist nostalgia or transnational anti-utopia. The chapter argues that Islamophobia has functioned as a powerful node of a wider call to radical action that is both anti-utopian (averting a perceived unfolding catastrophe by projecting as a warning an extreme version of the present) and utopian in its own right (unlocking an alternative actionable blueprint and path to a better future). Therefore, the chapter makes for the point that, in order to understand the dynamics of the radical right’s embrace of Islamophobia, ‘utopia’ is a far more accurate and useful conceptual category than regressive nostalgia for a mono-cultural, territorially rooted, and politically inward-looking alternative vision. In Chapter 30, Mark Littler and Kathy Kondor discuss terrorism, hate speech and ‘cumulative extremism’ on Facebook. Drawing on the results of analyses conducted using social media data from both the English Defence League and Britain First in the period immediately before and after the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, the chapter examines how far orthodox cumulative extremism theory can be applied to the online space. The findings show that rather than magnifying extremist attitudes and triggering calls to action that result in online attacks, there is comparably little evidence of a change in activity in the posts of either group following the terror attacks. This challenges the ideas of orthodox cumulative extremism theory, suggesting that the perceived threat of radical Islam will not automatically mobilise right wing extremist groups. The reasons for this are discussed, alongside the possible policy implications this may have. In Chapter 31, Paul Giannasi outlines police challenges in responding to Islamophobic hate crime. The chapter explores the nature of contemporary hostility towards Muslims and the unique challenges of meeting the needs of Muslim victims, including the conflation of race and religious identities in the minds of perpetrators, the issue of intra-group hostilities and the task of building the confidence of victims to come forward to report their attacks. The chapter outlines some of the key policy and legislative developments and explores the progress made by criminal justice organisations. In Chapter 32, Chris Allen considers governmental responses to Islamophobia in the UK. As the chapter notes, it is just over two decades since Islamophobia was afforded political recognition in the UK, prompted by the publication of the 1997 Runnymede Trust report on behalf of the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia. In light of this, the chapter reflects on the past two decades in the UK to consider how successive British governments have responded to Islamophobia since the publication of the CBMI report in 1997. Beginning with a short overview that affords some context about the issue of religious-based 6

Introduction

discrimination in the UK, it proceeds by first considering the New Labour government of 1997–2010, before then considering the Conservative-led Coalition and Conservative governments from 2010 through to 2017. In conclusion, some comparisons between the different approaches are provided.

Definition of Islamophobia We welcome the definition of Islamophobia released in November 2018 by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims following its year-long consultation across the UK: Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness. (All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims 2018, p. 11) We are pleased the definition fits with our own definition, which is based on Islamophobia as a form of racism and perceived Muslim identities.

Reference All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims. 2018. Islamophobia defined: Report on the inquiry into a working definition of Islamophobia/anti-Muslim hatred. London: All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims. Retrieved from https://static1.squarespace.com/static/599c3d2febbd1a90cffdd8a9/t/5bfd1e a3352f531a6170ceee/1543315109493/Islamophobia+Defined.pdf.

7

Part I

Conceptualising Islamophobia

1 The debate over the utility and precision of the term “Islamophobia” Nathan C. Lean

Introduction Within the academic disciplines that have come to study the phenomenon of Islamophobia in recent years, a trend has emerged: the laborious and ceaseless pursuit of defining the word. In conference talks and in the pages of various journal articles alike, scholars parse its etymological components, problematize its etymological deficiencies, and propose either their own definitions or coin entirely new terms that they believe capture more fully the reality of widespread prejudice that targets Muslims. In a way, much of this is to be expected. The fact remains that Islamophobia is a relatively new form of prejudice, at least in the eyes of the general public. Its drivers are not always easy to pin down. In some instances, it may appear that racism is an underlying motivator for Islamophobic rhetoric or actions, while in other instances, political factors, social dynamics, or actual biases about the religion of Islam itself may be at work. All of this is to say that the complexity of this form of societal prejudice lends itself to scholarly probing and to a natural desire to create clarity regarding the term. Anticipated as such an academic exercise may be, the resulting flow of writing and scholarship over the past two decades has muddled more than it has clarified. Scholars and on-the-ground activists have butted heads over what to call prejudice that targets Muslims. Despite a plethora of new information, it is not clear at all that the debate is having any effect. This is compounded by an undeniable fact about language that those who have a stake in defining Islamophobia seem to miss: society, not scholars, usually decide what words they will use to identify and describe such prejudices, and usually the matter is simply one of what sticks. In this case, much to the chagrin of those that would argue that there is a better term that must be adopted, “Islamophobia” is the clear victor, and its definition does not matter—the word and its meaning have become clear to the general public and whatever slight variances in understandings of it exist, they do not undercut the basic spirit of the word as it is most commonly deployed. Thus, it is time to move past the hackneyed deliberations about the possibility of alternative words. In what follows, I will argue precisely that point. To do so, I will invoke to a few different examples—some historical, others contemporary—that show the futility of debates over the definitions of this word. I will also attempt to highlight what I see as some of the blind spots that plague those scholars and activists who insist that the term “Islamophobia” is flawed and 11

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must be reconsidered. Admittedly, this argument is not pillared on an extensive data set or other irrefutable statistics that “prove” that one word is better than others, or one definition better than another. Rather it is driven by a common-sense-based approach that takes into consideration the multiple perspectives that have animated this discourse and juxtaposes them alongside observable realities and trends among the general public’s use and understanding of the word “Islamophobia.” To begin, we might consider some of the term’s descriptions and definitions that exist within the academy and non-governmental think tanks.

Identifying issues of clarity and content At their core, virtually all of the extant definitions of Islamophobia point to some negative sentiment (usually on the part of non-Muslims, though this not explained) towards Muslims or Islam. That seems obvious enough, though when one looks closely at various descriptions of the word more complexities emerge than one might expect. Beyond spelling out the simple etymology of the term itself—an “irrational fear” (phobia) of Islam—other factors have been introduced that aim to qualify exactly what is happening when “Islamophobia” is present. For the Runnymede Trust, who popularized the term in the late 1990s, “dread,” “hatred,” “fear,” and “dislike” are at play (Runnymede Trust 1997). The Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism (2018), a London-based Muslim advocacy group, used identical terms but added “hostility” to the mix. The European Muslim Initiative for Social Cohesion (2010) included buzzwords like “fear” and “hatred” in its 2010 definition of the word, but added that Islamophobia constituted “a form of intolerance and discrimination.” Scholars Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg (2008) make a similar move when they front their definition of term with an explanation of Islamophobia as a form of “social anxiety” that is “largely unexamined, yet deeply engrained” in Americans. Elsewhere, the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) introduces the notion of “close-mindedness,” while Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative emphasizes that Islamophobia affects not only Muslims, but also those with a “perceived religious, national, or ethnic identity associated with Islam.”1 Still, other scholars have chosen to situate Islamophobia in different ways, including: a “fear laden discourse;” a “single unified and negative conception of an essentialized Islam;” “a rejection of Islam, Muslim groups and Muslim individuals on the basis of prejudice and stereotypes;” or simply “indiscriminate negative attitudes or emotions directed at Islam or Muslims” (Zúquete 2008). One scholar, Chris Allen, who is among the most respected European academics when it comes to the issue of Islamophobia, has defined the phenomenon in a staggering 223 words, characterizing it as an “ideology” not unlike racism that sustains and perpetuates “negatively evaluated meaning” about Muslims and Islam, which has historical roots and which must also be understood in terms of “social action,” “power and domination,” “exclusionary practices,” and the presence of such constructions as “Muslim” or “Islam” to begin with (Allen 2010). Needless to say, variety abounds and it is difficult to imagine how the differentiating components of each of these definitions would ever come together in any coherent or meaningful way. In several cases this has led some to suggest an abandonment of the term “Islamophobia” altogether. In its place, various alternatives have been proposed: “anti-Muslim prejudice,” “anti-Islam prejudice,” “anti-Muslim bigotry,” “anti-Islamism,” “anti-Muslim hate,” and even, oddly enough, “anti-Muslimism” (Halliday 2010). As one might expect, however, each of these iterations have their own respective definitions. Importantly, the lack of clarity and agreement is not simply a matter that academics hash out in journal articles or conferences, either. Mainstream Muslim organizations are at odds over 12

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the term, too. Representatives from groups like Emgage USA (formerly Emerge USA) and Muslim Advocates have made the case that the term “Islamophobia” is less-than-ideal when it comes to meeting the needs of Muslims who are targeted with prejudice, while organizations like the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) have embraced the word institutionally, but have privately encouraged alternatives. In the years that I have spent advocating for programs and policies that combat Islamophobia, I have encountered innumerable instances where conversations with such groups bleed into the late afternoon without ever having moved beyond disagreements over the terminology. All of this reinforces my point, which is that these debates are mere noise in a world where most people seem to know precisely what they are talking about when they use the word “Islamophobia.” To put a finer point on it, we may think momentarily about the scholarship of Fernando Bravo Lopez, who is widely credited with having unearthed the origins and lineage of the word. Lopez discovered that its first uses in print came more than a century ago when, in 1910, two French writers described the experiences of African Muslims under colonial rule using the variation “Islamophobie” (Lopez 2011). These usages were iterations of judeophobie (which later became “anti-Semitism”) and xenophobie, or xenophobia. The authors did not labor to explain what they meant by the term Islamophobie, or why its usage should be justified. Rather, in describing the circumstances of West African Muslims whose lives were governed by an overbearing French mission, they briefly interjected the words “prejudice,” “fear,” and “dislike,” to communicate the simple idea that Muslims perceived themselves being targeted and judged on the basis of their religious identity (ibid.). Additionally, just as there was no effort to explain what judeophobie or xenophobie meant, it appeared that these authors seemed to think that the term was clear enough, or at the very least that its presence within a family of other similar words that described various prejudices would give obvious clues.

A public problem with an academic solution? Debates over the term “Islamophobia” may actually be a symptom of a larger problem: the inability of academia to relate to the concerns of people beyond its walls. While I maintain that there is great value in situating Islamophobia as a field of study within various academic disciplines, the fact remains that however the phenomenon is defined, it is affecting ordinary people in the streets of various cities across the globe every day. Thus, to a significant extent, conversations that would explain the case of a Muslim woman whose hijab was ripped off as “anti-Muslim hate” instead of “Islamophobia” are fraught with disconnectedness. We must ask: would she really care what language was used to define the animus directed at her, or would the more important point be that it was animus to begin with and we ought not furrow our brows over terminologies but rather use our creativity and energy to propose solutions? Admittedly, this may sound a bit rich within a scholarly volume such as this. Yet I would urge my colleagues and readers alike to think carefully about the implications of scholarly debates on topics that are as urgent as Islamophobia, and which are not merely theoretical subjects to be explored but actual manifestations of prejudice that have, in some cases, led to severe destruction and death. The bottom-up direction of information flow is critical here. In this case, I would argue that the general public has established a discourse for identifying, speaking about, and combatting Islamophobia, and it is the responsibility of academics to immerse themselves in that discourse rather than dictate, in top-down fashion, its acceptable parameters. As we have established, the word “Islamophobia” has been operational for well over a decade. As scholars Saher Selod and Steve Garner have tracked, between 1980 and 2014, the term appeared in the titles of more than 1,212 books, magazines, and newspaper articles. It was 13

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newspaper articles that comprised the overwhelming majority of such uses—1,121 (Garner and Selod 2014). In a similar vein, Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative has noted that since 2003, nearly 40 books have been written that feature the term “Islamophobia” as a part of their title. That uptick coincides with public paroxysms over Islam, with respect to the 2005 release of the film Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West, the lead-up to the 2006 midterm elections, and the controversy over the Park51 Islamic Cultural Center in New York City, for example.2 This is an especially salient point, for it suggests that the increase in usages of the word is the result of an increasingly shared recognition about what constitutes Islamophobia. Even beyond print materials, though, there is good reason to believe that, to state it plainly, “the ship has sailed” regarding the term “Islamophobia.” A simple Google search of the term yields immediate results on social media and mainstream news websites that utilize it in a way that indicates “prejudice” without explaining it beyond a mere clause or two that employs some synonym. Increasingly, television and radio outlets have also discussed prejudice that targets Muslims using the term, whether National Public Radio, Meet the Press, NBC Evenings News, or others. What is so striking about this is the economy of language. Just as the early French writers who first deployed the term did not overly emphasize its particularities, one gets the sense that a certain normalization has come into effect and that word is now so widely used and understood that there is no need to qualify it with excessive descriptions or caveats. This understanding, I believe, is most often premised on the idea of “prejudice,” and indeed in my own writing I have often used “Islamophobia” and “anti-Muslim prejudice” interchangeably. Without risking an overly psychological explanation, this is an intentional move on my part, and it is based on a cue that popular discourses on the topic have given those of us who write about it: simplicity is unavoidable. To put it differently, it is unreasonable to expect that the general public will grasp long words or expressions to describe behaviors for which they have a pre-existing category. Nor is it reasonable to expect that the general public will conjure up a particularly convoluted and complex definition each time they utter the word “Islamophobia.” Rather, it is more likely that we hear the word “Islamophobia,” think about categories and words that are similar, and place it—along with our understanding of what it is— into that group. Thus, “Islamophobia” occupies in the same mental real estate as anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, etc., though we know that what distinguishes it from those other things is that it relates to Islam and Muslims. In the end, what more could we ask for? To identify “Islamophobia” immediately with “prejudice” is to legitimize the feelings of animus that Muslims who are the targets of Islamophobia feel, while at once calling attention to the fact that those who are responsible for such feelings (as a result of their words or actions) belong to the same group of people who would express racist, anti-Semitic, or homophobic views. The wide net of “prejudice” as the category to which the public believes “Islamophobia” belongs leaves space for discussions about, for instance, the nexus between Islamophobia and racism, while making the topic digestible enough that an ordinary citizen can use it and understand it without having to participate in such discussions. Of course, there are those who will invariably insist that “phobia” does not indicate “prejudice,” but rather an “irrational fear.” This, as I hope I have spelled out, misses the point entirely. To be sure, “phobia” does not mean “prejudice,” but my argument about the general use of the word “Islamophobia” and the triviality of searching for a perfect alternative or definition is that the meanings of all words are the result of how we—the speakers—use them. They do not have expressive meaning on their own, but rather their meanings are attached externally. Let us think about this with an abstract comparison for a moment, if only to highlight my argument about language. If I were to ask you to place this book on the “table,” you will likely look 14

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around the room for a flat wooden surface with four legs, perhaps with a lamp or a placemat on top, and put the book there. Perhaps a kitchen table, or a coffee table. The fact that we both know what a “table” is—that we have developed a shared vocabulary to communicate an idea that we attach to the word—is important. There is no such thing as a “table” in the world, at least not in a sui generis sense; there is only wood that is assembled with a flat top and four legs, and we have agreed to give it this name. In other languages, various other terms are used that communicate a shared idea. Thus, as long as our shared understanding of the concept the same (you placed the book on the table, not in the bathtub), things are just fine. The meaning of the word is a result of how it is commonly understood and used. “Anti-Semitism,” some critics have rightly noted, refers to people who speak Semitic languages, many of whom are Arab Muslims. Yet, we do not use the word “anti-Semitism” to refer to prejudice that targets Muslims. Instead, we use it to refer to prejudice that targets Jews, almost exclusively. This is despite the fact that its etymology points to something other than that. Here again, though, the point is sharpened into fuller relief: we have a shared understanding of the term “anti-Semitism” and what it means. We have developed our vocabulary to communicate the idea that someone who harbors prejudice towards Jews is “anti-Semitic.”3 The common usage dictates the definition and ultimately the public’s understanding. This is no different with “Islamophobia,” where, for all the hand-wringing over its etymological deficiencies, the public seems to have grasped the idea that we are referring to a form of prejudice that targets Muslims on the basis of their religious identity, and that this form of prejudice is no more acceptable than others that occupy the same mental category.

The phenomenon versus the terminology It should go without saying that the increased pursuit to define and refine the term “Islamophobia” is a direct result of the fact that there is increased awareness, among scholars and others, of some phenomenon to which we have assigned this label. In other words, its uptick is not merely a matter of an arbitrary decision by media personalities and intellectuals to discuss the topic. Rather, it corresponds with a climate in which we, as a society, have identified that Muslims are routinely on the receiving end of animus and scorn. In response to that, the term has gained ascendancy. The word “Islamophobia” is used to describe any number of instances where, indeed, Muslims face prejudice: online attacks in the world of social media, physical assaults that are driven by a manifest animus towards the Islamic religion or its adherents, attacks against institutions such as mosques, and the like. Apart from those who perpetrate these crimes (and the fraction of far-right purveyors of prejudice against Muslims), it seems clear enough that American and European spaces have arrived at a place where, at the very least, these types of attacks are collectively recognized as unacceptable. Therefore, whether or not it is “anxiety,” “fear,” “dread,” “hate,” “hostility,” or a “historically rooted ideology” that gives life to “exclusionary practices” and “discrimination,” the fact remains that wherever “Islamophobia” is present, an injustice has occurred and has been enacted upon one group of people by another. In the end, then, the academic debate seems to be less about what actually exists than it does about how we label it. The fact that there seems to be agreement over the presence of animosity or hate towards Muslims, and that this phenomenon is itself significant enough to warrant a special discourse, is all the more reason to focus our attention on how the public sees, understands, and talks about it. Moreover, taking heed of Karl Marx’s axiom, to “change the world,” not just interpret it philosophically, those of us who study Islamophobia but have qualms about the term would 15

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do well to notice the pushback that the word receives from the very people who actively promote inflammatory material about Muslims and Islam. The reason that American bloggers like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, conspiracy theorists like Frank Gaffney, politicians like Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen, and others vociferously reject “Islamophobia” as a label is that they see it as a threat to their work. When the public accepts such a term (think of the way that the civil rights era changed when “racism” became commonly applied), it becomes infinitely more difficult to advance the types of ideas that are often associated with it without risking being labeled a “racist,” an “Islamophobe,” a “homophobe,” an “anti-Semite,” or whatever terminology fits the prejudice. The argument could easily be made that continued debate about the word plays directly into the hands of those who would seek to undermine it, and while I am not advocating that we accept it wholesale for this reason, I do maintain that the worst of the anti-Muslim activists and agitators seem to have recognized something that many of us in the academic world have not, namely, that there is increasing public agreement about the word Islamophobia and the phenomenon it describes.

Moving forward It would not be prudent to intimate the necessity of some coercion such that all who speak and write of prejudice towards Muslims would get on the same page and use the same term. I am aware, for sure, that language does not work that way, either, and that the plurality of expressions, phrases, and terms that form our vocabularies will inevitably come to life when we express our views on this topic or others. By now, the reader will have noted that I, too, have employed synonyms for “Islamophobia” at various places in this chapter, straying from the tendency to use one word in every instance I speak of its associated phenomenon. Still, though, my hope is that this common-sense-based approach will encourage us to think more carefully about the language that we do use, and recognize that no matter how we may feel about the words “Islamophobia,” it is not going anywhere. More to my point, though: if it were to be changed, it would not be changed by scholars who debate its deficiencies in academic circles, but rather by a larger community or public shift. Given what we know about its history, entrenchment in public discourse over the years, and new awakening in the age of increased animosity towards Muslims, that seems unlikely. And thus, the choice for academics and others who nonetheless insist that we must continue to debate it becomes clear: we may chase frantically after a train that has already left the station in hopes that if we run hard enough we may catch it; or we can board the train that is dedicated to moving forward with serious questions about how to ameliorate and end a pernicious form of prejudice that is taking the lives of our fellow citizens as we speak.

Notes 1 See www.islamophobia.org/research/islamophobia-101.html and http://bridge.georgetown.edu/about. 2 See http://bridge.georgetown.edu/islamophobia-the-right-word-for-a-real-problem. 3 For a fuller discussion of the definition of anti-Semitism, see Marcus (2015).

References Allen, C., 2010. Islamophobia. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. European Muslim Initiative for Social Cohesion, 2010. A Proposed Definition of Islamophobia. Available at: www.emisco.edu/a-proposed-definition-of-islamophobia/ [Accessed 4 June 2018]. Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism, 2018. Defining Islamophobia. Available at: www.fairuk.org/ docs/defining%20islamophobia.pdf [Accessed 4 June 2018]. 16

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Garner, S., and Selod, S., 2014. The Racialization of Muslims: Empirical Studies of Islamophobia. Critical Sociology, 41 (1), 9–19. Gottschalk, P. and Greenberg, G., 2008. Islamophobia: Making Muslims the Enemy. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Halliday, F., 2010. Islamophobia Reconsidered. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22 (5), 892–902. Lopez, F., 2011. Towards a Definition of Islamophobia: Approximations of the Early Twentieth Century. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34 (4), 561–562. Marcus, K. L., 2015. The Definition of Anti-Semitism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Runnymede Trust, 1997. Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All. London: Runnymede Trust. Zúquete, J. P., 2008. The European Extreme-Right and Islam: New Directions? Journal of Political Ideologies, 13 (3), 321–344.

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2 Islamophobia as the racialisation of Muslims Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood

Introduction Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition. And of course it should go without saying that Muslims in Europe who for any reason take part in, plot, assist or condone violence against the west (not just the country they happen to have found sanctuary in, but any country in the west or western troops) must be forcibly deported back to their place of origin . . . Where a person was born in the west, they should be deported to the country of origin of their parent or grandparent. (Murray 2006) It has been argued that there are presently two discernible dynamics permeating hostile attitudes toward Muslims in Europe. The source of the first is located squarely in contemporary agendas of security and counter-terrorism (and associated anxieties that fuel a securitisation of ethnic relations more broadly). The second, it is argued, has been inherited from an ideological-historical relationship with notions of the Orient, one that is intertwined with legacies of imperialism (Geisser 2008). Neither dynamic is discrete and both can be seen to overlap in the public discourses of a variety of European societies. These macro political sentiments coalesce in the findings of Pew European attitude surveys which report worryingly high trends of representative samples of Hungarians (72%), Italians (69%), Poles (66%), Greeks (65%), Spaniards (50%), Swedes (35%), Dutch (35%), Germans (29%) and French (29%) and Britons (28%) who rate Muslims ‘unfavourably’ (Pew Global Attitudes Projects 2016). Over a corpus of work, we have long argued that these sentiments and their implications need to be understood through a concept of racialisation and related processes of racialisation. While this has increasingly become commonly accepted, it was not so when we started making these arguments. There was instead much more interest in inscribing (or re-inscribing) the concept of Islamophobia with conceptual materials from the register of orientalism. As we argued then, and as the opening extract from Douglas Murray of the Henry Jackson Society betrays, there appear to be several components in contemporary anti-Muslim sentiment which go beyond orientalism, and that any concept of Islamophobia should seek to capture. For example, 18

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in his prescription for ‘dealing with Muslims’, Murray relies upon an essential idea of Europe that is closed to Muslims, and where, concomitantly, Muslims’ civil and political rights are less meaningful, while their ethnic origins serve as important means of ascertaining where they really belong. His anti-Muslim sentiment, therefore, simultaneously draws upon signs of race, culture and belonging in a way that is by no means reducible either to Empire or to hostility to a religion alone, and compels us to consider how religion has a new sociological relevance because of the ways it is tied up with issues of community identity, stereotyping, socio-economic location, political conflict and so forth. On the one hand, and especially given that religious discrimination in most Western societies does not usually proceed on the basis of belief but perceived membership of an ethno-religious group (e.g. Catholics in Northern Ireland, Muslims in the countries of former Yugoslavia, and Jews in general), Murray’s account is consistent with an established tendency of targeting religious groups and communities as opposed to beliefs and opposition to beliefs. For as his extract illustrates, these phenomena need not be a pure ‘religious discrimination’ phenomena but one which also traffics in stereotypes about foreignness, phenotypes and culture. Here there are obvious similarities between forms of anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim sentiment that remain under explored (Meer 2014), and which may herald important differences as well as similarities (Renton and Gidley 2017). Of course how Muslims respond to these circumstances will vary. Some will organise resistance, while others will try to stop looking like Muslims (the equivalent of ‘passing’ for white); some will build an ideology out of their subordination, others will not, just as a woman can choose to be a feminist or not. Again, some Muslims may define their Islam in terms of piety rather than politics; just as some women may see no politics in their gender, while for others their gender will be at the centre of their politics. One the other hand, the question that is nevertheless posed for any contemporary concept of Islamophobia is whether it can, among other things, analytically capture the contingent racial and cultural dynamics of the macro-historical juxtaposition between ‘Europe’ and ‘Islam’; sufficiently delineate the racialising component of Murray’s insistence from a potentially sedate critique of Islam as a religion; and more broadly summon enough explanatory power to stipulate how long established organising concepts within the study of race and racism may, in some Hegelian fashion, be developed and formulated in a sociologically convincing manner. In this respect we are happy to see more literature on race and racism engaged in the discussion on the Islamophobia. This chapter then restates what purchase the ideas of ‘racialisation’ and ‘cultural racism’ can bring to bear on the conceptualisation of these matters. To examine the entanglements between race and religion as they apply to Muslims, the first part of the chapter explores the theoretical and normative issues raised by these questions, while the second half turns to interview data with journalists and opinion formers.

Conceiving Islamophobia The origins of the term Islamophobia have been variously traced to an essay by two French Orientalists (Dinet and Baamer 1925), ‘a neologism of the 1970s’ (Rana 2007, p. 148), an early 1990s American periodical (Sherridan 2006), and, indeed, to one of the present authors (see Modood 2005). What is less disputed is that the term received its public policy prominence with the Runneymede Trust’s Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia (CBMI) Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All. Defined as ‘an unfounded hostility towards Islam, and therefore fear or dislike of all or most Muslims’ (CBMI 1997, p. 4), the report conceived of 19

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eight argumentative positions to encapsulate its meaning, and through which the members of the commission sought to draw attention to their assessment that ‘anti-Muslim prejudice has grown so considerably and so rapidly in recent years that a new item in the vocabulary is needed’ (ibid.). This, of course, was before global events had elevated the issue to a prominence previously only hinted at, and which resulted in a second sitting of the commission which heard testimonies from leading Muslim spokespeople of how ‘there is not a day that we do not have to face comments so ignorant that even Enoch Powell would not have made them’ (Baroness Uddin quoted in CBMI 2004, p. 3). What the commission perhaps did not fully anticipate was how the term would be criticised from several quarters for, among other things, allegedly reinforcing ‘a monolithic concept of Islam, Islamic cultures, Muslims and Islamism, involving ethnic, cultural, linguistic, historical and doctrinal differences while affording vocal Muslims a ready concept of victimology’ (Ozanne 2006, p. 28; see also Afshar et al. 2005). To others the term has neglected ‘the active and aggressive part of discrimination’ (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, p. 6) by conceiving discrimination as a collection of pathological beliefs, inferred through the language of ‘-phobias’; with the additional complaint that the term does not adequately account for the nature of the prejudice directed at Muslims. This complaint was advanced in the late Fred Halliday’s (1999) thesis and is worth examining because Halliday accepted that Muslims experience direct discrimination as Muslims. He nevertheless considered Islamophobia misleading because: It misses the point about what it is that is being attacked: ‘Islam’ as a religion was the enemy in the past: in the crusades or the reconquista. It is not the enemy now [. . .] The attack now is not against Islam as a faith but against Muslims as a people, the latter grouping together all, especially immigrants, who might be covered by the term. (Halliday 1999, p. 898; original emphasis) So in contrast to the thrust of the Islamophobia concept, as he understood it, the stereotypical enemy ‘is not a faith or a culture, but a people’ who form the ‘real’ targets of prejudice. Halliday’s critique was richer than many others but what it ignored was how the majority of Muslims who reported experiencing street level discrimination recount – as testimonies to the 2004 Runneymede follow-up commission (CBMI 2004) bore witness – that they do so more when they appear ‘conspicuously Muslim’ than when they do not. Since this can result from wearing Islamic attire it becomes irrelevant – if it is even possible – to separate the impact of appearing Muslim from the impact of appearing to follow Islam. For example, the increase in everyday personal abuse since 9/11 and 7/7 in which the perceived ‘Islamicness’ of the victims is the central reason for abuse, regardless of the validity of this presumption (resulting in Sikhs and others with an ‘Arab’ appearance being attacked), suggests that discrimination and/or hostility to Islam and Muslims is much more interlinked than Halliday’s thesis allows (and, in all fairness to Halliday, may not easily have been anticipated at his time of writing). In contrast we contended that, instead of trying to neatly delineate social tendencies that are inextricably linked; they should instead be understood as a composite of ‘racialisation’. This requires some elaboration.

Muslims and racialisation The idea of racialisation boasts a long pedigree even if the term itself does not, and although it was perhaps first encountered in British sociology through the work of Michael Banton, arguably in his Race Relations (1967), it was Robert Miles (1982, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1993) who for a long time offered its most sustained exposition. Reminiscent of a Du Boisian tradition 20

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in which the psychic and the social are intertwined, Miles’s conception of racialisation sought to capture the ways in which racial processes can attribute ‘meaning to somatic characteristics’ in a way that ‘presumes a social psychological theory which explains the nature and dynamics of the process’ (1989, p. 75). As a Marxist, of course, Miles anchored his conception of racialisation in an account of material relations and an ideologically driven conflict borne of the contradictory impulses inherent to circumscribed nationhood and labour migration (Miles 1982, pp. 170–173). What is important for our discussion, however, is that Miles never insisted that processes of racialisation must be premised upon a ‘biological inherentism’ (an issue elaborated below) and which informed his resolve that scholars ‘must not restrict the application of the concept of racialisation to situations where people distinguish one another by reference to skin colour’ (ibid., p. 121; see also the discussion of Miles in Modood 1996). More specifically, what he maintained that we should be studying instead are the ways in which ‘signifying processes’ interact to ‘construct differentiated social collectivities as races’ (Miles 1989, p. 79). To facilitate such inquiry, and because he recognised that the social dynamics of racism can in practice be mixed-up with a host of different kinds of ‘-isms’, such as nationalism, ethnicism and sexism and so forth, Miles (ibid., p. 87) put forward a conceptualisation of ‘racial articulations’.1 He did so to preserve the analytical clarity of racism while recognising that in social life exclusionary discourses and prejudices are rarely discrete and, to the contrary, frequently overlap in ‘sharing a common content or generalised object which allows them to be joined together or interrelated, to be expressed in ways in which elements of one are incorporated in the other’ (ibid. 87). This is an astute conceptualisation and a good contemporary illustration of its explanatory purchase may be found in the summary report on Islamophobia published by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia shortly after 9/11. This identified a rise in the number of ‘physical and verbal threats being made, particularly to those visually identifiable as Muslims, in particular women wearing the hijab’ (Allen and Nielsen 2002, p. 16). What is of particular note is that despite variations in the number and correlation of physical and verbal threats directed at Muslim populations among the individual nation-states, one overarching feature that emerged among the fifteen European Union countries was the tendency for Muslim women to be attacked because of how the hijab signifies a gendered Islamic identity (ibid. 35). Indeed, and to return to the earlier point concerning the distinction between antipathy toward Muslims and antipathy toward those appearing to follow Islam, these overlapping and interacting ‘articulations’ of anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic prejudice can also be illustrated further in the attitude polling of non-Muslim Britons one year after 9/11. This showed that . . . there could be little doubt from [a YouGov poll, 31 October–1 November 2002, n = 1,890] that 9/11 had taken some toll. Views of Islam since 9/11 were more negative for 47%, and of Britain’s Muslims for 35% (almost three times the first post-9/11 figure in [an NOP poll, 10 October 2001, n = 6008]). . . . Dislike for Islam was expressed by 36%, three in four of whom were fearful of what it might do in the next few years. One quarter rejected the suggestion that Islam was mainly a peaceful religion, with terrorists comprising only a tiny minority . . . (Field 2007, p. 455) If these examples and the preceding discussion begin to make manifest a number of confusions contained within working references to racial and religious antipathy toward Muslims and Islam, then – as debates concerning racism and other religious minorities, not least with respect to anti-Semitism, betray (Meer and Noorani 2008) – this is not uniquely problematical in the conceptualisation of anti-Muslim sentiment. 21

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Religion and racialisation More precisely, the interactions between racial and religious antipathy can be helpfully drawn out through Modood’s (2005, pp. 9–10) description of anti-Semitism as ‘a form of religious persecution [which] became, over a long, complicated, evolving but contingent history, not just a form of cultural racism but one with highly systematic biological formulations’. Now this should not be read as an endorsement of the view that all racism can be reduced to biological inferences. Indeed, in the example above modern biological racism has some roots in pre-modern religious antipathy – an argument that is supported by Rana (2007). The implication is that non-Christian religious minorities in Europe can undergo processes of racialisation where the ‘otherness’ or ‘groupness’ that is appealed to is connected to a cultural and racial otherness which relates to European peoples’ historical and contemporary perceptions of those people that they perceive to be non-European (Goldberg 2006). This means that how Muslims in Europe are perceived today is not un-connected to how they have been perceived and treated by European empires and their racial hierarchies in earlier centuries (Gottschalk and Greenberg 2008). This is because their perception and treatment clearly has a religious and cultural dimension but, equally clearly, bares a phenotypical component. For while it is true that ‘Muslim’ is not a (putative) biological category in the way that ‘black’ or ‘south Asian’ (aka ‘Paki’) or ‘Chinese’ is, neither was ‘Jew’. In that instance it took a long non-linear history of racialisation to turn a faith group into a race (Modood 2006). More precisely, the latter did not so much as replace the former but superimposed itself because even though no one denied that Jews were a religious community, with distinctive language(s), culture(s) and religion, Jews still came to be seen as a race, and with horrific consequences. As Bunzl (2005, p. 537) maintained, ‘the move from Judenhass (Jew hatred) to anti-Semitism marks a crucial turning point of the late 19th century. It was understood both by contemporaries and later observers as marking a momentous transformation, characterised by the rise of an organised political movement as well as a shift in alterity from religion to race.’ Similarly, Bosnian Muslims were ‘ethnically cleansed’ because they came to be identified as a ‘racial’ group by people who were phenotypically, linguistically and culturally the same as themselves. The ethnic cleanser, unlike an Inquistor then, wasted no time in finding out what people believed, if and how often they went to a mosque and so on: their victims were racially identified as Muslims.

Biological and cultural racism So race is not just about colour, for while racialisation has to pick on some features of a people related to physical appearance and ancestry (otherwise racism cannot be distinguished from other forms of groupism) it need only be a marker, and not necessarily denote a form of determinism. This is illustrated in the conceptualisation of cultural racism as a twostep process (or, alternatively, a second step, with colour racism being the first step) (Modood 1997). The interesting question arises as to whether it could be a one-step racism: could colour racism decline and fade away and yet cultural racism remain and perhaps even grow? One can certainly imagine a future in which a group could continue to have their culture vilified while colour racism simultaneously declined, and the distinction between what might be called racism proper and ‘culturalism’ is commonly held and continues to be argued for (Blum 2002; Fredrickson 2002). Yet while it appears that to discriminate only against those perceived to be culturally different might be borderline racial discrimination, where cultural essentialism and inferiorisation may be involved it would certainly share some of the qualities of what we know of racist stereotyping and practice today. Even then, however, it may still be regarded 22

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as a cultural prejudice or cultural exclusionism rather than racism per se, so that if persons are targeted only on the basis of their behaviour and not on the basis of their ancestry, then might we not have something we should call culturalism rather than racism? While this is an interesting question, it appears to go against what we should expect from communities and social dynamics, since cultures and cultural practices are usually internally diverse, containing and omitting various ‘authentic’ elements, and adaptations and mixes. It follows then that the culturalised targeting could very easily be expansive, rather than purist, and so in one way or another catch most if not all cultural minorities in that group. This means that it is not clear that culturalism, where it is associated with distinct communities, can really be distinguished from racism in practice, even if it can be in theory. But if we accept that racism does not necessarily involve inherentism then we do not have to rule out cultural racism as an example of racism. This means that cultural racism is not merely a proxy for racism but a form of racism itself, and that while racism involves some reference to physical appearance or ancestry it does not require any form of biological determinism, only a physical identification on a group basis, attributable to descent. As such we should guard against the characterisation of racism as a form of ‘inherentism’ or ‘biological determinism’ which leaves little space to conceive the ways in which cultural racism draws upon physical appearance as one marker, among others. As such, and consistent with our interpretation of Miles (1989), we maintain that formulations of racialisation should not be solely premised upon conceptions of biology in a way that ignores religion, culture and so forth.

Framing racism discretely Our data suggests that one of the explanations for the degree of ambivalence attributed to antiMuslim sentiment reflects a commonly held narrow definition of racism which assumes that the discrimination directed at conventionally, involuntarily, conceived racial minorities cannot by definition resemble that directed at Muslim minorities. This reckoning is premised upon the assumption that Muslim identities are religious identities that are voluntarily chosen (see the case study of Incitement to Religious Hatred legislation in Meer 2008). So it is frequently stated that while gender, racial and sexuality based identities are ascribed or involuntary categories of birth, being a Muslim is about chosen beliefs, and that Muslims therefore need or ought to have less legal protection than these other kinds of identities.2 What this ignores, however, is that people do not choose to be or not to be born into a Muslim family. This is not to impose an identity or a way of being on to people who may choose to passively deny or actively reject their Muslim identity because, consistent with the right of self-dissociation, the rejection of Muslim identification or adoption of a different self-definition should be recognised where a claim upon it is made. The point is that no one chooses to be born into a society where to look like a Muslim or to be a Muslim creates suspicion, hostility, or failure to get the job you applied for.3 One frequent reaction to this complaint, however, is the charge that Muslim minorities are quick to adopt a ‘victim mentality’. These two separate but interlinked issues are illustrated in the following comments of a very senior journalist with editorial and commissioning responsibilities at the Daily Telegraph: It [Islamophobia] doesn’t mean anything to me. No, it’s a device or a construct that’s been used to cover an awful lot of people and censor debate . . . The racism thing is a bit difficult to sustain because we are talking about a religion here, not race and you have plenty of people who are not Muslim, if you are trying to equate Muslims with South Asians, obviously that’s not necessarily the case at all. (Personal interview) 23

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This extract conveys the view that the term Islamophobia is used politically to silence potential criticism of Islam and Muslims, and is particularly invalid because racism is only plausible where ethnic groups – not ethnically heterogeneous religious groups – are concerned.4 The journalist continues: I think I probably went to the first press conference where the phrase came up, I think it was about five or six years ago . . . Since we were the ones that were being accused of it, it just seemed rather difficult for me to get my head around, because if Islamophobia means a fear of, literally, that was not what we were talking about. We were talking about fear of terrorists who act in the name of Islam; it’s a different thing altogether. (Personal interview) The first sentence of this extract reveals this journalist’s first interaction of the term, and their sense of grievance in ‘being accused of it’, while the second sentence invokes a criticism also made by Reisigl and Wodak (2001) who insist that it is analytically problematic to cast perceptions of prejudice or discrimination is the language of ‘phobias’. The last sentence in this extract, which focuses upon terrorism, is particularly instructive and so will be addressed separately below. In the meantime the characterisation of Islamophobia may be contrasted with another that emerges in the less definitive account of a senior BBC news editor with responsibilities across broadcast, internet and radio journalism. This journalist expresses a similar anxiety to that of our Daily Telegraph respondent, in reconciling what he considers to be a ‘full and frank’ account, with the potential charge of anti-Muslim bias in BBC reporting: [T]here are certainly quite vocal groups of Muslims who are very quick to stress the problems that Muslims can face in this country and work very hard to encourage journalists like me and others to reflect a particular view which might be described as a victim mentality . . . I am personally not persuaded that it [Islamophobia] is a huge issue in Britain. It is, racism in all its forms is a problem . . . I think for the most part it’s really a very tolerant country so I’m kind of conscious that we mustn’t allow ourselves for the sake of a good story to start painting a picture of a slice of British society which does suffer more than it really does . . . (Personal interview) While the latter half of this passage reveals a critical perspective on the prevalence of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment, it is interesting to note how, in a marked contrast to the Daily Telegraph journalist, the BBC respondent comfortably places the issue of Islamophobia alongside issues of racism which ‘in all its forms is a problem’. This may in part be due to the insistence of ‘vocal groups of Muslims’ that this respondent refers to, for the BBC does have a significant policy of diversity awareness training, but the proactive inclusion of Muslim voices is a moot point and is returned to below; as is the characterisation of Muslim complaints forming part of an alleged ‘victim mentality’. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most Muslim-friendly attitude is to be found in the words of a senior figure at The Guardian5 who describes how treating anti-Muslim sentiment with ‘less seriousness’ can bias the framing of news-items: I think it is easy to slip into . . . I saw it the other day, and it was three headlines together on one page of the Daily Telegraph, and the headline said something like ‘Foreigners live in 1.3 million houses’ . . . Then there was a headline where the word Muslim was being used in a pejorative sense and I thought these things to my mind are quite dangerous . . . I think that’s where some papers make a really big mistake time after time after time. (Personal interview) 24

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One development that might alleviate this tendency is the greater presence of Muslim journalists working across news items on different newspapers. This is a point that is also raised by a senior correspondent with the Daily Mirror who contrasts the public service requirement of the BBC with the commercial imperatives of newspaper – and particularly tabloid – journalism which pursues an aggressive drive for sales: Because the way newspapers in particular work, I don’t know that that’s their job to reflect Muslims per se – do you know what I mean? . . . In my time at the Mirror I remember the Sun hired a Muslim commentator not long after 9/11 and she did a lot of discussion about whether she was going to wear her veil in the picture – Anila Baig. That was all a bit self conscious. The Mirror had a few first person pieces and features and so on. . . if there was a story that involved Muslim groups being invited to No. 10 then you would call the Muslim group to see how it’d gone but I wouldn’t say it would go any deeper than that. . . . I just report as I do every story. I’m not self-consciously having to check myself or judge myself. (Personal interview) This extract illustrates the dynamics involved in nurturing ‘Muslim voices’ within newspapers in a way that can draw attention to how issues of importance to some Muslims, such as the wearing of the veil, may be reported in an educative manner. So even though it may be perceived as ‘a bit self-conscious’, it appears much more substantive than seeking ‘Muslim comment’ that – by this journalist’s own admission – would not penetrate the framing of a story in much depth. This is then related to the final issue that emerges from this paragraph and which concerns the absence of reflexivity in this respondent’s conception of journalism, something that is evidently in a stark contrast to our Guardian respondent.

Placing the role of religion What the last extract also touches upon is a related issue concerning the ways in which religion per se is met with anxiety. One particular implication is that while curbs on defamation of conventionally conceived ethnic and racial minorities may be seen as progressive; the mocking of Muslims is seen to constitute healthy intellectual debate (for a discussion of these sentiments in Danish cartoon affair see Modood 2006 and Levey and Modood 2009). This tendency is perhaps heightened when the religion in question takes a conservative line on topics of gender equality, sexual orientation, and progressive politics generally; leading some commentators who may otherwise sympathise with Muslim minorities to argue that it is difficult to view Muslims as victims when they may themselves be potential oppressors. As Parekh (2006, p. 180) describes, this can be traced to a perception that Muslims are ‘collectivist, intolerant, authoritarian, illiberal and theocratic’ and that Muslims use their faith as ‘a self-conscious public statement, not quietly held personal faith but a matter of identity which they must jealously guard and loudly and repeatedly proclaim . . . not only to remind them of who they are but also to announce to others what they stand for’ (ibid., p. 181).6 It is thus unsurprising to learn that some attitude surveys report that 77% of people in Britain are convinced that ‘Islam has a lot of fanatical followers’; 68% consider it ‘to have more to do with the middle ages than the modern world’, and 64% believe that Islam ‘treats women badly’ (see Field 2007, p. 453). These assumptions are present in our BBC journalist’s insistence that ‘the nature of the debate is such that some Muslims most certainly will be offended (interview).’ The recent furore that accompanied the Archbishop of Canterbury’s lecture on civil and religious laws in England, and which touched upon the availability of recourse to aspects of Shar’ia for Muslims who seek it in civil courts in Britain (see Modood 2008), provides a good 25

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illustration of the implication of this journalist’s position. Indeed, at the height of the storm one of the authors received an email from a Daily Mail journalist which stated: ‘I was wondering if you might talk to us about sharia [sic] law in the UK, and the effects it might have on our society. . . . What we do need is someone saying that Sharia [sic] law would not necessarily be a good thing, so if this is not for you, then don’t worry!’ (email received 8 February 2008). This sort of approach is anticipated by our respondent from the Daily Mirror who describes how it is widely accepted that concerns of accuracy and validity come second to getting a story on Muslims into circulation: If you were being accurate you would be going to communities . . . and speaking to people. What we tend to do is report what is happening . . . someone from the Beeb might be if they are doing a story on whether or not Muslim women should be allowed to wear a veil when they go to see their MP. I would have talked to Jack Straw and someone from the organisation. (Personal interview) The optimism informing the view that it should be left to the BBC to play the role of an honest broker, in reporting emotive stories concerning Muslims with impartiality, is not something borne out by our interview data. Indeed our senior BBC respondent considers the portrayal of difficult stories concerning religious affairs generally, but particularly stories focusing upon Muslims, as constituting a necessary part of a public conversation which, in the example below – proceeds by questioning for example the legitimacy of the wearing of a face-veil (niqab). As the extract highlights, this is informed by this journalist’s view that visible markers of difference and diversity are intrinsically tied to broader, in this view legitimate, public anxieties over immigration that should not be silenced in the interests of maintaining what the respondent describes as an artificially harmonious conception of multiculturalism:7 It needs to be something that we do discuss and think about and have a national conversation about because from it flows all the other discussion about our expectations of those who come from other countries to live and work here. . . . I’ve talked about the veil endlessly over the last year because I do think it’s been a really interesting one . . . suddenly people began to say, well hold on, is it right that somebody can teach a class full of kids wearing a full veil? And I think it’s a perfectly reasonable question and one that we need to discuss. (Personal interview) In a significant contrast to the public questioning – as an editorial line – of the visibility and indeed legitimacy of religion, our Guardian respondent describes how their newspaper seeks to incorporate religious coverage in an educative manner. One example may be found in its ‘Comment is Free’ section which had a section on ‘blogging’ the Qu’ran through serialisations penned by the writer and intellectual Ziaudin Sardar. Another example includes that of the appointment of a young Muslim woman as its religious affairs correspondent, which ‘probably raised eyebrows in one or two places’. The journalist continues: [S]he went on the hajj and did some video for the website, and what I thought was terrific as well, she was able to report pilgrim voices, and these were young British people, they were from the north of England, from London, and so on and so forth, and what the hajj meant to them, what their Muslim identification meant i.e. voices you don’t normally get in a national newspaper. 26

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While these examples perhaps take us away from a direct discussion of racism and Islamophobia, in the way that was elaborated earlier, it is still worth noting how much importance the paper attributes to the value of embedding plural constituencies within its journalism – perhaps as a prophylactic against unwitting anti-Muslim sentiment. The Guardian is, then, unique in its approach for not only does it seek to afford space in which to cultivate the representation of religion in public discourse, but it does so through a consciously Muslim interlocutor.

The impact of anxieties over terrorism With a significantly different interest in the meaning and implication of Islam to its British adherents, other respondents place little importance upon garnering an empathetic understanding of the spiritual role of religion. The focus instead appears orientated toward an assumed relationship between religion and issues of terrorism; issues that are deemed to be specifically pertinent in their respective coverage of Islam and Muslims. As our Daily Mirror respondent reiterated: ‘there’s a global jihad going on that we’re all involved in . . . everything changed after 9/11 and again after 7/7’ (personal interview). This sentiment is repeated in the words of the Daily Telegraph journalist who summarises how 7/7 ‘was a surprise because what we were looking at in the late 90’s and up to 2004 was the belief that it was going to be imported terrorist attacks. . . the big surprise was that they were going to attack their own country which was a bit of a turning point I think. It was a bit of an eye opener’ (personal interview). There is evidence to suppose that this is a widely held view, with Field (2007, p. 459) concluding that post-7/7 there has been an increased ‘tendency to criticise the inactivity of the Muslim population as a whole, and not just its leaders’; a sentiment arising from the belief that ‘the Muslim community had not done enough to prevent support for terrorism in its midst’. Indeed, he makes the finding that this belief has given rise to a wide-spread view that it is legitimate to proactively target Muslims for reasons of national security: [T]hree-fifths argued that Britain’s security services should now focus their intelligencegathering and terrorism-prevention efforts on Muslims living in Britain or seeking to enter it, on the grounds that, although most Muslims were not terrorists, most terrorists threatening the country were Muslims . . . (Field 2007, p. 459) These perceptions are perhaps embodied in terminologies that collapse different issues together; a good example of which may be found in attitudes towards the term ‘Islamist Terrorism’. Our Daily Telegraph journalist, for example, remains convinced that terrorism by some Muslims is primarily an outgrowth of Islamism: I think we still edge around certain issues. . . For instance the Government is reluctant to talk about Islamist terrorism even though somebody like Ed Hussein whose book The Islamist makes the point that there is a fundamental difference between Islam and Islamism. Unless you understand the ideological basis of it you don’t understand anything. (Personal interview) It is worth noting how despite the contested and relational nature of terms such as ‘terrorism’ and ‘Islamism’, which invite qualification and contextualisation, that it is increasingly common to find the portrayal of a seamless association between the two. This is a good example of what Jackson (2007) has called a culturally embedded ‘hard’ discourse since so many other 27

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assumptions compound and reinforce it. One example of what is meant by this can be found in how Melanie Phillips (2006a) has stated that ‘after the Rushdie affair, Islam in Britain became fused with an agenda of murder’. This characterisation conceives the violence that is committed by Muslims as ‘something inherent in the religion, rendering any Muslim a potential terrorist’ (Poole 2002, p. 4). While some scholars and journalists have gone to great lengths to argue that most Muslims consider violence and terrorism to be an egregious violation of their religion (see Halliday 2003, p. 107), attempts to de-couple the two are sometimes dismissed as oversensitive (cf Phillips 2006b; Gove 2006; Cohen 2007; Anthony 2007). It is worth remembering that in Field’s (2007, p. 457) analysis 56% of a survey believed that a strongly held Muslim identity could lead to violence. The terms ‘Islam’ and ‘Islamism’ are therefore variably used and contested but in at least one dominant discourse emotive conflation rather than careful distinctions are the order of the day and generative of dangerous stereotypes. While media discourses can be seen as contributing to this racialisation, practitioners in some part of the media are also under pressure to question their role in it. The BBC respondent said of its internal debates over the issue of terminology: In the end we’ve used a number of terms and you have to appreciate this is always tricky because in journalism you have to find more than one way of saying everything otherwise it becomes boring. So we talk a lot about Al Qaeda inspired terrorism; the word Islamist has become reasonably accepted as a way of describing a certain type of person who takes a view . . . but all these terms are tricky because there are people who might well describe themselves as an Islamist but who would never dream of wanting to blow people up. . . . I’ve certainly been in meetings with. . .Muslims who have challenged the BBC . . . I suppose that’s what I mean by we’ve come a long way, we have been forced quite rightly to think about all these issues and I think we still wrestle with it but I think we are better. (Personal interview) This is an instructive account because it suggests that the BBC in particular can be lobbied to take account of minority sensitivities and the risks of stigmatisation. Not only that, but that they have also undergone an internal process of learning which leads them to continue to ‘wrestle’ with these issues. The respondent balances their statement, however, with another in which they reiterate that the ‘real dangers for us and for all journalists in shying away from some of the real challenges that Al Qaeda inspired philosophy presents for British society as a whole and indeed for all Muslims within British society’. On this issue even the Guardian respondent shares a similar concern, elaborated in the following extract: I went to see Musharaf [the President of Pakistan on a visit to London] earlier this week and he got quite belligerent about this and he was saying ‘don’t you point the finger at Pakistan, most of your home grown people [terrorist suspects] are home grown, that means they were born, they were bred, they were educated here . . .’ Of course, he’s got a point; he’s got a very good point! (Personal interview) It is arguable that these perceptions give rise to the minority in question being perceived as a threat rather than in terms of measures designed to eliminate discrimination. This may of course stem from the ways in which it is difficult to sympathise with a minority that is perceived to be disloyal or associated with terrorism. There is also a political imperative to deny the victimisation of such a minority, to argue that racialisation is not taking, that evidence for discrimination 28

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is negligible, that there are no reasons for acting against Islamophobia – for the sake of prioritising security, even at the expense of equality.

Conclusions This chapter has explored why there may be little sympathy for the notion that Muslim minorities are subject to racism by virtue of their real or perceived ‘Muslimness’. It finds that the reasons are four-fold and includes, firstly, a conceptualisation of racism, which assumes that the protections afforded to conventionally, involuntarily, conceived racial minorities should not be extended to Muslims because theirs is a religious identity that is voluntarily chosen. One salient, discursive, trope germane to this view laments Muslim minorities for the adoption of a ‘victim mentality’. Secondly, the way in which religion per se is frowned upon among contemporary British intelligentsia invites the ridiculing of Muslims as healthy for intellectual debate and not, therefore, an issue of discrimination. Thirdly, while ethnic identities are welcomed in the public space there is much more unease about religion. This means that some commentators, who may otherwise sympathise with Muslim minorities, argue that it is difficult to view Muslims as victims when they may themselves be potential oppressors. Finally, some find it difficult to sympathise with a minority that is perceived to be disloyal or associated with terrorism, a view that leads to a perception of Muslims as a threat rather than as a disadvantaged minority subject to increasingly pernicious discourses of racialisation. Each of these findings invites further study and underscores the need for a greater exploration of anti-Muslim discourse.

Acknowledgement This chapter draws upon materials from N. Meer and T. Modood (2009) ‘Refutations of Racism in the “Muslim Question”’, Patterns of Prejudice, 43(3–4), 335–354, and N. Meer and T. Modood (2010) ‘The Racialisation of Muslims’, in A. K. Vakil and S. Sayyid (eds), Thinking Through Islamophobia, New York: Columbia University Press. We gratefully acknowledge the publishers’ permission to draw on these works.

Notes 1 See also Grossberg’s (1993: 31) idea of how racial articulations can contain ‘a multiplicity of ways in which different meanings, experiences, powers, interests, and identities can be articulated together’. 2 For example, Polly Toynbee, writing in The Guardian, has stated that she reserves the ‘right’ to affront religious minorities on matters of faith because ‘race is something people cannot choose and it defines nothing about them as people. But beliefs are what people choose to identify with . . . The two cannot be blurred into one/which is why the word Islamophobia is a nonsense’ (see Polly Toynbee, ‘My right to offend a fool’, The Guardian, 10 June 2005). Elsewhere she has proclaimed: ‘I am an Islamophobe and proud of it!’ (see Polly Toynbee, ‘In defence of Islamophobia’, The Independent, 23 October 1997). 3 Of course how Muslims respond to these circumstances will vary. Some will organise resistance, while others will try to stop looking like Muslims (the equivalent of ‘passing’ for white); some will build an ideology out of their subordination, others will not, just as a woman can choose to be a feminist or not. Again, some Muslims may define their Islam in terms of piety rather than politics; just as some women may see no politics in their gender, while for others their gender will be at the centre of their politics. 4 Also writing for the Daily Telegraph, Michael Burleigh has stated: ‘Those claiming to speak for the Muslim community have played to the traditional Left-wing imagination by conjuring up the myth of ‘far-Right extremism’. In reality, evidence for ‘Islamophobia’/as distinct from a justified fear of radical Islamist terrorism or a desire to protect our freedoms, institutions and values from those who hold them in contempt/is anecdotal and slight’ (see Michael Burleigh, ‘Religious hatred bill is being used to buy Muslim votes’, Daily Telegraph, 9 December 2004). 29

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5 The Guardian is probably the only national newspaper where the issue of anti-Muslim sentiment is taken seriously. Yet even here prevailing opinions are clearly divided among its columnists, with Madeline Bunting, Gary Younge, Seamus Milne and Jonathan Freedland considering it to be an issue of real concern, and Polly Toynbee, Catherine Bennett, and Timothy Garton Ash, among others, considering it to be much less so.This is in contrast to its sister paper, The Observer, particularly in the writings of Will Hutton and Nick Cohen, who view it as a misnomer (see Meer 2006). 6 This is also supported in survey evidence which reports anxiety over the intensity of Muslim religiosity. Field (2007: 457) notes that ‘in G-2004h, 70% acknowledged that they seemed to take their faith more seriously than Christians, while in G-2005b, 28% had a concern about the presence of those with strong Muslim beliefs. In G-2005c, 80% felt that British Muslims had a keen sense of Islamic identity which was still growing (63%) and which had to be reckoned as a “bad thing” (56%), with the potential to lead to violence and loss of personal freedoms and to act as a barrier to integration.’ G-2004h, G-2005b and G-2005c are polls; see Field (2007) for full details of each of these. 7 In another part of the interview they state: ‘I think the BBC has been through an interesting phase which echoes that slight change that I’ve been talking about in the last few years which is I think there was a belief that we had to promote multiculturalism; that it was our job to try and do lots of stories about how lovely it was to have lots of people from different cultures in Britain and not report too much what tensions there were, certainly not allow the voices of those people who had concerns about the changing nature of their high street or whatever it was. I think that has changed over the last couple of years. I think there has been, quite rightly a change of view that we do need in the corporation to ensure that we reflect whatever tensions and anxieties and indeed prejudices that may exist within British society and a recognition that for people to question, for instance the level of immigration into this country is not of itself, beyond the pale. That is a legitimate position for someone to hold and indeed, has become a pretty central political discussion right now.’

References Afshar, H., Aitken, R., and Myfanwy, F. 2005. Feminisms, Islamophobia and Identities. Political Studies, 53 (2), 262–280. Allen, C., and Nielsen, J.S. 2002. Summary Report on Islamophobia in the EU15 after 11 September 2001. Vienna: European Monitoring Centre for Racism and Xenophobia. Anthony, A. 2007. The Fallout: How a Guilty Liberal Lost His Innocence. London: Jonathan Cape. Banton, M. 1967. Race Relations. London: Tavistock. Birt, J. 2006. Notes on Islamophobia. Retrieved on 9 March 2009 from www.yahyabirt.com/?p=48. Blum, L. 2002. I’m Not a Racist But . . . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Bunzl, M. 2007. Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Hatreds Old and New in Europe. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press. Burleigh, M. 2004. Religious Hatred Bill is Being Used to Buy Muslim Votes. Daily Telegraph, 9 December. CBMI. 1997. Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All. London: Trentham Books CBMI. 2004. Islamophobia: Issues Challenges and Action. London: Trentham Books. Cohen, N. 2007. What’s Left? How Liberals Lost Their Way. London: HarperPerennial. Dinet E. and Baamer, S. B. I. 1925. L’Orient vu de l’Occident. Paris: H. Piazza. Field, C. D. 2007. Islamophobia in Contemporary Britain: The Evidence of the Opinion Polls, 1988–2006. Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, 18 (4), 447–477. Fredrickson, G. 2002. Racism: A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Geisser, V. 2008. L’islamophobie en France au regard du debate European. In C. Bertossi (ed.), European Anti-Discrimination and the Politics of Citizenship. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Goldberg, D. T. 2006. Racial Europeanization. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29 (2), 331–364. Gottschalk, P. and Greenberg, G. 2008. Islamophobia: Making Muslims the Enemy. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Gove, M. 2006. Celsius 7/7. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Grossberg, L. 1993. The formation of Cultural Studies: an American in Birmingham. In V. Blundell., J. Shepherd and I. Taylor (eds), Relocating Cultural Studies: Developments in Theory and Research. London: Routledge. Halliday, F. 1999. Islamophobia Reconsidered. Ethnic & Racial Studies, 22 (5), 892–902. Halliday, F. 2003. Islam and the Myth of Confrontation: Religion and Politics in the Middle East. London: I. B. Tauris. 30

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Jackson, R. 2007. Constructing Enemies: ‘Islamic Terrorism’ in Political and Academic Discourse. Government and Opposition, 42 (3), 394–426. Levey, G. B. and Modood, T. (eds) 2009. Secularism, Religion and Multicultural Citizenship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meer, N. 2006. ‘Get Off Your Knees!’ Print Media Public Intellectuals and Muslims in Britain. Journalism Studies, 7 (1), 35–59. Meer, N. 2008. The Politics of Voluntary and Involuntary Identities: Are Muslims in Britain an Ethnic, Racial or Religious Minority? Patterns of Prejudice, 42 (1), 61–81. Meer, N. (ed.) 2014. Racialization and Religion. London: Routledge. Meer, N., and Noorani, T. 2008. A Sociological Comparison of anti-Semitism and Anti-Muslim Sentiment in Britain. The Sociological Review, 56 (2), 195–219. Miles, R. 1982. Racism and Migrant Labour. London: Kegan Paul. Miles, R. 1984. The Riots of 1958: Notes on the Ideological Construction of ‘Race Relations’ as a Political Issue in Britain. Immigrants & Minorities, 3 (3), 252–275. Miles, R. 1986. Labour Migration, Capital Accumulation in Western Europe Since 1945. Capital and Class, 28 (1), 49–86. Miles, R. 1988. Racism, Marxism and British Politics. Economy and Society, 17 (3), 428–460. Miles, R. 1989. Racism. London: Routledge. Miles, R. 1993. Racism After ‘Race Relations’. London: Routledge. Modood, T. 1996. If Races Do Not Exist Then What Does? Racial Categorisation and Ethnic Realities. In R. Barot (ed.), The Racism Problematic: Contemporary Sociological Debates on Race and Ethnicity. New York: Edwin Mullen Press. Modood, T. 1997. ‘Difference’, Cultural Racism and Anti-Racism. In P. Werbner and T. Modood (eds), Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism. London: Zed Books. Modood, T. 2005. Multicultural politics: Racism, ethnicity and Muslims in Britain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Modood, T. 2006. Obstacles to Multicultural Integration. International Migration, 44 (5), 51–62. Modood, T. 2008. Multicultural Citizenship and the Anti-Sharia Storm. Open Democracy.net, 14 February. Murray, D. 2006. What Are We to Do about Islam? Speech to the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference on Europe and Islam, The Hague, February. Ozanne, W. I. 2006. Review of Confronting Islamophobia in Educational Practice. Comparative Education, 42 (2), 283. Parekh, B. 2006. Europe, Liberalism and the ‘Muslim Question’. In T. Modood., A. Triandafyllidou and R. Zapata-Barrero (eds), Multiculturalism, Muslims and Citizenship: A European Approach. London: Routledge. Pew Global Attitudes and Trends. 2016. Negative Views of Minorities, Refugees Common in EU. Retrieved from www.pewglobal.org/2016/07/11/negative-views-of-minorities-refugees-common-in-eu. Phillips, M. 2006a. After the Rushdie Affair, Islam in Britain Became Fused with an Agenda of Murder. The Observer, 28 May, p. 28. Phillips, M. 2006b. Londonistan: How Britain Created a Terror State Within. London: Gibson Square Books. Poole, E. 2002. Reporting Islam: Media Representations of Muslims. London: I. B. Tauris. Rana, J. 2007. The Story of Islamophobia. Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, 9 (2), 148–162. Reisigl, M., and Wodak, R. 2001. Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Anti-Semitism. London: Routledge. Renton, J. and Gidley, B. 2017. Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe: A Shared Story? Basingstoke: Palgrave. Sheridan, L. 2006. Islamophobia Pre and Post September 11th 2001. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 21, 317–336.

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3 Islamophobia as the hidden hand of structural and cultural racism Tahir Abbas

Introduction There is a natural rate of racism in Britain that persists in the post-war period, one that has transformed from an explicitly racialised discourse to a present focus on the culture and religion of visible ethnic minorities. While racism towards Black groups continues unabated, the particular experience of anti-Muslim racism has developed in the context of racialised groups who are also discriminated based on perceived cultural relativism and the presumption of potential radicalisation on the part of conservative Muslim groups. This chapter provides an analysis of how elite actors use the biopolitical discourse of hyper-masculinity as a way in which to construct a conflict narrative between far-right groups and ‘Muslim extremist’ groups in the UK context. They instrumentalise the oppositional positions taken by mutually counter-competing groups in order to reinforce reductive discourses on the threat of extremism and the apparent failures of multiculturalism. These forms of Islamophobia and Occidentophobia sustain a national and international hegemon that objectifies working class and ‘underclass’ groups in order to assert existing local and global ethnic and class relations. Effectively, both positions reflect the struggles of economic marginalisation, cultural exclusion, political alienation and social anomie specific to each group (Abbas 2017). This chapter argues that elite discourse depicts social conflict at the bottom of society as mirrored misrepresentations of each other, but omitting their shared characteristics, such is the nature of elite English urban racial and class authority at the centre vis-à-vis the periphery.

British Muslims responses to Islamophobia In thinking through the issues on British Islam and Muslims in Britain, my mind wandered back to the 1980s as I recalled the Honeyford Affair. At the time, a disgruntled head teacher, described as borderline racist or even Powell-esque, spoke out against ideas of diversity of multiculturalism in schools. Was Honeyford racist or correct in calling out for Muslim integration through and in education? Should British Muslim families be forced to integrate? Alternatively, should an anti-racist multicultural education cater for differences, providing opportunities to celebrate those differences as part of a collective national psyche? In reality, at the time, there 32

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was a growing hiatus between the home lives of Muslim children and practices within schools, combined with policy paralysis, as none of the teachers, government nor the communities as such were able to come to terms with the challenges (Troyna 1982). Little did I realise at the time that this incident was not a peculiar local anxiety, but that swathes of the British Muslim community, especially those found in the Midlands and in the north, having suffered the deleterious consequences of deindustrialisation and automation, were living lives that were potentially moving in the opposite direction to that of wider society. With Thatcherism came financial deregulation and the liberalising of markets through global trade and monetary exchange. A moving further apart was revealed in this instance, but it was indicative of something potentially deeply problematic. The attack on political correctness and on the race equality or race relations lobby had begun in earnest, and as has been witnessed over the course of recent history, it was only a matter of time until these systems, established up to keep racist, sexist and homophobic individuals and institutions in check, were dismantled. A few years later, the ‘Rushdie affair’ erupted into a major crisis. What started off as an ill-judged local efforts to ban and even burn the book soon became an international affair, with the Ayatollah Khomeini throwing his weight behind a fatwa calling for the death of this author (Samad 1992). By the mid-1990s, as the horrors of the civil war in Bosnia became apparent, British Muslims were abhorred by the idea that blonde-haired and blue-eyed Muslims, born and bred in Europe, faced ethnic cleansing. The year 2016 marked the heart-breaking two-decade anniversary of the Srebrenica tragedy. By then, Islamophobia had already become an established concept with extensive reach (Runnymede Trust 1997). In 1999, seven UK-born Pakistani Muslims were implicated in a plot to bomb the British Embassy and a nightclub in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. They served approximately five years each in a prison in Yemen. Soon after, the events of 9/11 occurred. The world today endures the implications of this event and the ‘war on terror’ that ensued. The present urgency is in relation to Islamophobia, which increased violently after these events, largely based on the widely projected perception that the problem of violent extremism is a problem with Islam itself. But when four British-born Bradfordian Muslims were implicated in the London suicide bombings of three tube stations and a bus, the ‘rules of the game’ did change (Abbas 2007). The policy of ‘Prevent’ has become the main engagement, community-development and countering violent extremism plank of UK counter-terrorism policy; the community-facing dynamic of the UK government’s counter-extremism strategy. Despite being formally in existence since 2006, public knowledge and evaluation gaps about its effectiveness remain limited. For many, ‘Prevent’ conflates legitimate political resistance among young British Muslims as indications of the likelihood of violent extremism, thereby providing credence to critics who argue that Prevent is a form of social control (Heath-Kelly 2012). Prevent has created considerable headaches for government. Ever since the Blair era, the policy approach is focused on ideology as the root cause of extremism, but academia, civil society and government are unable to come to terms with their disagreements. As of 2015, Prevent is now a statutory duty affecting numerous public sectors, including education and the health services. Since the ‘war on terror’ and the events of 7/7, questions of terrorism, radicalism and the socio-cultural realities of British Muslims are usually spoken in the same breath, now heightened in the light of a number of issues occurring during the last few years. Specifically, the rise and now decline of the so-called Islamic State, the Syrian refugee crises, the predicaments facing the Eurozone after the global collapse of 2008 and rising populism that has resulted in outcomes such as Brexit and Trump in 2016. While this populism is anti-difference, anti-immigrant and anti-other, it is specifically anti-Islam. Furthermore, this resistance to Islam and Muslims is not individualised, it is against the collective concept of Islam. 33

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Various politicians, policy-makers, journalists and social thinkers are actively directing this trend. In a post-truth post-normal world, there are no answers to the challenging questions that face humanity. In many senses, it is business as usual, and much remains the same. But what has become of real interest is the realisation that the ‘left behind’ are now angrier and more resentful than ever. They are prepared to vote for change, lashing out against the establishment, even though in the end it will create greater harm to themselves and society as a whole. Large segments of populations in traditionally secular Western societies are without voice, without comfort and without organisational capacity, and hence the rage against the machine. While the machine is violently kicked by Brexit and Trump, the machine will not change or reform as little momentum exists for anything else, even if there are pockets of reformist resistance entering mainstream thinking. Counter-terrorism is conceived as an overarching framework that seeks to create a set of policies and interventions that deal with terrorism through active counternarratives, as well as operational matters of security, policing and intelligence. Counter-extremism is the notion of building community resilience and capability to defend and counteract what are problematic characteristics potentially affecting threats to national security. However, when a young person dons a hijab or shows attitudinal changes regarding particular norms and values, perhaps deemed as acceptable in the recent past, suddenly decides to withdraw altogether from their peer groups, it suggests that something far more complex is going on. This is where Prevent should come into its element as an assessment tool, separating conservative social behaviour from actions that reflect a potentially problematic outcome. But the reality is that most cases referred to the Channel programme within Prevent are of merely frustrated young people who need direction and a cause in life – not a fundamental reason to self-annihilate for some greater good. No policy is perfect, as any history of social policy will inform. It is no surprise that professionals working within the framework of supporting the delivery of Prevent policy in their local areas regard Prevent as imperfect, needing revision, restructuring, rebranding and perhaps even re-rationalisation in the light of greater thinking and understanding in this area. However, the lack of public engagement on Prevent on the part of the UK government creates mistrust, distrust and disengagement on the part of the public with respect to the state. British Muslim communities face particularly acute challenges regarding their visibility and their negative representation in media and politics. The vacuum is subsequently filled by the critical voices who have no opposition or critical engagement from the government, the academy or the mainstream media. Over the last few decades, the discourse of integration has changed – multiculturalism has been discarded without being fully tested or applied, while and integration means assimilation – much like how it was in the 1950s and 1960s, or indeed until the ‘liberal hour’ (i.e. the late 1960s). Muslim groups are defined and seen only through the lens of religion. Instead of supporting Muslim groups to achieve better integration through social mobility and equality of opportunity, the focus is on Islam as the unit of change – an entire religion, not its people. So where does all this leave Muslim minorities (more than 35 million in western Europe and in North America, and around 3 million in Britain)? Where does it leave the role and position of Islam in the public sphere? Since the Rushdie Affair and the fall of the Berlin Wall, occurring almost simultaneously, the desire has been to see differences as bounded by culture, ethnicity and even heritage, but not by religion, or specifically Islam. Islam is portrayed as an alien monolith. Coupled with the socio-economic inequalities facing all in society, a body of poor, alienated, marginalised and voiceless groups, both white and Muslim, remain pitted against each other for the least in society (Ebner 2017). When 9/11 happened a few weeks after the ‘northern disturbances’ in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley, the official government response was to build community cohesion – and 34

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wholly abandon all concerns in relation to ethnic inequalities (Amin 2002). Difference, of a kind, is tolerated, but trying to ensure that different individuals achieve equality of opportunity and equality of outcome has been eliminated from any social policy discourse. The language of containing Muslim identity politics – even voices that seek to resist domestic and foreign policy failures – has become the norm. By its very nature, Prevent, depicted as an enabling force, is in effect a disabler of all other debates concerning Muslims in Britain. Prevent’s claims for recognition focus on Muslims only through the re-shaping of the Islamic and Muslim presence in society. However, this is deeply flawed – and potentially dangerous. It misunderstands Islam: homogenising and essentialising a diverse faith. It affirms the neoliberal paradigm – namely, rolling back the frontiers of the state, bringing freedom to markets and championing individual competition, namely homo economicus. The collective shapes Islam, not the individual; however, attempts are made by the state to engineer it for the population as a whole, with present-day political elites focusing on the few at the expense of the many. But Islam in the mainstream is also struggling because of its ‘bad rep’. There are a few leading figures who bridge the gap between media, politics and society, but they do so at the behest of the state. Moreover, these Islamic institutions are held in the hands of older but not so wiser men who are out of touch with the needs and wants of the world, especially Muslim youth and millennials who are comfortable with diversity but uncomfortable with authoritarianism. Ergo, there are two competing forces to consider here. One element of society seeks to reduce Islam while those who garner credit for their apparent authority over it stifle those who are trying to expand Islam from within the faith. It leads to malaise, discord and stagnation. As the West struggles with its post-West future, Islam struggles with reaching a state of preWest state. This signals an opportunity but also various risks, as the individuals required at the vanguard of change do not exist in the number or quality required. As such, the challenges outnumber the opportunities. However, the relatively gloomy realities of the last few years are likely to persist. The Western globalised capitalist hegemon is not collapsing. It is expanding, but it does so by concentrating wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. Muslims across the world suffer the consequences of this expansion, as they have done for the greater part of the last few hundred years through colonialism, imperialism, immigration, forced assimilation and ultimately subjugation. All the while the West selectively remembers its past, constantly reinventing the narrative of the nation, currently retreating into a sinister hyperbolic regarding ethnic nationalism, reflecting on the panic of whiteness, not in retreat, but in denial of its inevitable reconfiguration at the hands of the very force that has created the disquiet – globalisation. In reality, British Muslims are not in control of managing the idea of British Islam. These challenges are beyond the scope of British Muslims to define on their own, but they are asked to do so by those whose objectives are to promote a muscular secular liberalism – the single dominant strand that resists the current configurations of contemporary British Islam. The situation facing British Muslims remains precarious at best, with no obvious clarity concerning its direction. There is also the disturbing rise of populism, which plays on Islamophobia, but more worryingly, how far its reach has extended into popular culture and dominant politics. There is anger and frustration afflicting a significant body of Muslims in the inner cities and this is where most of the challenges will continue to remain.

The hyper-normalisation of Islamophobia Since the events of 9/11 in the USA and various acts of terrorism throughout Western Europe in the last decade or so, considerable attention is given to the topics of Islamophobia and its associated concerns, Occidentophobia. They are mutually reinforcing discourses that perpetuate Islamic 35

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extremism as a function of certain religious norms and values associated with an ethnic and cultural category. Namely, Muslim minorities in western Europe, and the ways in which these very same Muslims hold specific anti-Western attitudes that disengage them from wider society, thereby further deepening their associations with a problematic religious and cultural identity that sets them apart from mainstream society. The forces of English elite class structure perpetuate a perennial conflict between different sectors of the working class and the ‘underclass’ of British society. The ideological concerns that affect white working class young men and British-born Muslim minorities are related to issues of national and local identity, social opportunity and mobility, economic marginalisation, political disenfranchisement, and cultural alienation. In effect, both groups are experiencing the same kinds of issues, however complex. These concerns are generated by an elite discourse, which is internalised by these groups, who in turn regard their relative counterparts within the same oppositional framework, thereby further legitimising existing modes of domination and subordination that stem from English elitism and classism (Misha 2017; Hirsch 2018). Some find it difficult to accept the ‘R’ word. Racism is a concept that has completely disappeared from the popular vernacular in relation to understanding differences in society. Greater concern is placed on notions of values, or in relation to certain community norms seen as antithetical to Britishness. Much of this refers to the seemingly intractable problem that emerge from being British and being Muslim, as regularly expounded by the dominant hegemonic media and political elite. Race has disappeared from the agenda, not by accident, but by design. Antiracism had its heyday in the late 1970s but then meandered. By the 1980s, multiculturalism was the buzzword; as if it would solve the problems of racism. However, while multiculturalism raises awareness of differences it did not fully fight racism, structural discrimination or ethnic inequalities. After 9/11 and 7/7, multiculturalism has been reduced to a security agenda that isolates Muslims and immigrant groups. The issue is that Muslims are treated as a racial group, where religion is replaced as the defining characteristic of racism. Racism, however, is not the same as racialism, which is the idea that we are all tribalistic to some extent. A strong undercurrent suggests it is acceptable to be anti-racist, but there are Muslim-specific issues that worry ‘us’ about their ‘values’. It results in blindness to the deeper structural factors that lead to discrimination and a desire to focus on culture, or multiculture, as a means to fight racism, which is almost impossible because racism or indeed equality is not all about culture. This Islamophobia as a newfound anti-Muslim racism has become the dominant hegemon that divides ‘us’ and ‘them’. This critique is essentially an implicit misrecognition of Muslim minorities in western Europe (Lentin and Titley 2012). Moreover, this Islamophobia has driven far right social, community and political activism right across western Europe. From the English Defence League (EDL), Britain First and National Action in Britain, to the National Front in France, to the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, to the Northern League in Italy, to the Pax Europa Citizen’s Movement in Germany, far right groups have re-entered the popular imagination in local area communities and in national politics (World Policy Institute 2011). Thus, the racialisation of Muslims through the political, and media manufacture Muslims as monsters goes beyond managing extremists as such to the more general signifier of Muslim as extremist (Tyrer and Sayyid 2012). In recruiting minorities into minority screen productions further enhances the racialisation of groups through the dominant mode of production that coaxes minorities through a neocolonial logic, such is the power of institutionalised racism (Saha 2012). The EDL formed in 2009 based on a combination of circumstances. Its founding members, originally from the town of Luton, witnessed a demonstration by angry young Muslims against the return of British soldiers who marched through the city centre. Local white Britons felt that radical Islamists had penetrated the city. The EDL promotes Islamophobia through their proselytising the view that the there is a risk of ‘Islamification’ in Britain and in Europe more widely, 36

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a thesis commonly propagated by a range of far right groups. The EDL also emerged out of the failures of the British National Party, which effectively disintegrated due to internal struggles for power and connectivity (Allen 2011). Its founding leader, Tommy Robinson, courted considerable publicity for his politics and his organisation until August 2013 when he stepped down as its head. There were concerns around his growing criminal record as well internal discord within the organisation. In January 2014, Robinson and a number of close associates were jailed for mortgage fraud. Robinson continues to be involved with various groups and in the media, regularly getting in trouble for inciting hatred. Although there is considerable attention devoted to the ways in which minority groups use the lens of religion and culture to mobilise society, in effect, they operate within the political landscape where new political representations emerge alongside these less integrative approaches. Religion offers opportunities to engage in a critique of state institutions for Muslim groups but also for Christian groups (Back et al. 2009). It is not possible to eliminate the role of the state and the reproduction of elite racism, in particular in relation to Muslim groups in the current period. Racism is not the preserve of far right groups; rather it is institutionalised in the workings of state apparatus. It is also to do with the way in which nations imagine their identities, or rather how they are constructed in the light of selective memories of the origins of those nations (Anderson 1992). Ever since the economic downturn that the Western world has experienced since 2008, there has been systematic projection of the glorious nation with a tremendous history presently facing a threat from within and without, much of which also led to the Brexit vote on 2016 (Khalili 2017). This threat is named as Islam and Muslims, and the configuration of these topics is such that they sustain society’s perpetual anxiety thus legitimising the status quo. The crisis of capitalism has led to an illiberal set of policies on the part of seemingly liberal plural democracies (Williamson and Khiabany 2011). Here, the position of ethnic and religious minorities is not simply a reflection of groups subjected to racism but that they are part of a dominant white worldview that intersects capitalism with racism. Moreover, ‘Islamophobia, like other racisms, can be colour-coded: it can be biological (normally associated with skin colour). But it can also be cultural (not necessarily associated with skin colour), or it can be a mixture of both’ (Cole 2009, pp. 251–252). The resurgence of Orientalism in the USA combined with a current approach to Islamophobia is linked to imperialism and dominant US foreign policy in the Middle East. Islam and Muslims are cast in a reductionist and essentialist terms that evoke a sense of imminent danger from a primitive body of people and their ways. This framework has existed since the events of 9/11 and it remains an ongoing phenomenon in the USA (Kumar 2010). In the midst of the numerous challenges facing young men in British society, there is concern in relation to hyper-masculinity. This is about the expectations placed upon men that create fear, anger and pain rather than a smooth transition from childhood to adulthood. As such, ‘jihadis’ and far right young men are all thus the same in this regard, where differences in religion and culture in relation to ‘the other’ are problematised and subsequently politicised. Effectively it focuses on questions of identities, which are exploited through elite discourse, and internalised at the bottom of society in relation to former working-class groups and the offspring of immigrant groups. Hyper-masculinity is failing young men in Britain in considerable ways. The consequences are that it encourages the need for young people to prove themselves – to seek recognition – to become somebody. An elite media and political discourse creates and sustains these oppositional perspectives between two sets of groups in society that effectively suffer the same sets of social, economic and political problems, thus fuelling Occidentophobia and Islamophobia. It exploits the social cleavages facing young men. At the heart of the issue is the need for elites to maintain their position while ‘othering’ others. In reality, there tends to be a far more positive negotiation 37

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between seemingly conflictual norms and values, and it is precisely a sense of positive Britishness, European-ness or American-ness that encourages young Muslims to speak out and critically engage with the discourse that focuses on their apparent unassimilability (El-Haj and Bonet 2011). While there is some degree of association made with a particular faith identity, the vast majority of British Muslims are pro-integration, where foreign policy is a marginal issue in their daily lives (Thomas and Sanderson 2011). A positive approach to improving ethnic and cultural relations with white majority groups remains a distinct focus for Muslim minority communities in the north of England in particular: a body of people who have been subject to considerable negative attention given the northern disturbances of 2001 and ongoing problems deindustrialisation and economic marginalisation facing the region. The decline of masculinity is at the heart of the problems created by English class structure facing the pressures of neoliberal globalisation. While there remains considerable interest in the field of ‘Islamophobic studies’ and publications with Islamophobia in their titles are routinely cited, there remain problems of classification, categorisation and generalisation that afflicts the concept. For some, it is as a step between a product and a process, where the latter includes history as well as contemporary politics, and the former relates to patterns of social outcomes that can be measured as distinct racial, cultural and religious discrimination. However, there remains an analytical and ideological gap between what is conceived, what is perceived and what is ultimately realised. For others, the ambiguity of the concept is its strength as Islamophobia takes many different shapes and forms depending on context and opportunity. These have different local and global manifestations, and how they are found within specific spheres of intellectual, political, cultural and social ontologies (Sayyid and Vakil 2011). Other scholars have come to focus on its relationship to existing patterns of, xenophobia, Orientalism and imperialism that affect liberal plural democracies and constructions of multiculturalism found within them (Esposito and Kalin 2011). The challenge of Islamophobia is not one that Muslims can undertake on their own. There is a need to ensure that Muslims can work with other religious minority groups who face comparable patterns of discrimination, intimidation, violence, exclusion and racialisation. A positive outcome reduces the likelihood of counter-competing narratives and wastefulness in relation to resources and political opportunities (Weller 2006). In many ways, Europe is experiencing a sense of disconnection from its historic construction of a continental identity because of associations made with extremism and violence in relation to Islam and Muslims. However, the irony is that the presence of Muslim majorities in Europe is redefining Europe, recreating notions of European-ness, and thereby reconfiguring notions of national identities across western Europe (Allievi 2012).

The tragedies of symbolic and actual Islamophobic violence In August 2017, Grenfell Tower burned. The ravaging fires killed over eighty people in the process. Many of the victims were Black and Muslim minority groups not on the radar of immigration or welfare services. Shortly before this tragic event, a 48-year-old drove into worshippers who were leaving late evening prayers on a balmy July night outside Finsbury Park Mosque. The media and political responses to the attack were lame. Arguably, Darren Osborne would not have been radicalised if Muslims were not being demonised in the media on a daily basis. He had no other motivation than wanting to ‘kill all Muslims’. Osborne was ultimately convicted for the murder of Makram Ali and for injuring eight others. The murderous, violent intent of terrorists derives from hate leading to violence and death. It is directed towards specific ethnic, religious or racial minority or majority groups. Otherwise, any ‘mentally ill’ person, ‘unemployed loner’ or ‘drifter’ with a history of domestic violence or 38

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abuse towards others could seemingly carry out these acts of violence. It, therefore, becomes a problem for newspapers and other media outlets that do not emphasise randomness in these acts of violence and extremism. In under-exposing the objective explanations behind the political or ideological motivations behind attacks, it intimates a far greater demographic capable of such acts. At the same time, Islamism is presented as thriving among radicalised Muslims who use it to legitimise violence. It avoids all nuance. In the case of far right extremists, not only is there limited recognition of the wide-ranging problem of far right radicalism and terrorism, over-emphasising the ‘loner’ angle is a useful distraction away from implicating the wider negative structural and cultural forces at play. Meanwhile, Islamophobia has normalised in society to such an extent that even to evoke it is to suggest that those challenging the issue in particular, Muslims, are being disingenuous, at best, or downright treacherous, at worst (Josse 2017). In reporting on responses to attacks, Islamist extremists are interpreted as purely ideological while English or other white ethnic majority individuals are said to have social and psychological problems. This suggests a general degree of acceptance on the part of society that their violence towards Muslims is somehow legitimate (i.e. because of something that Muslims espouse or adhere to, e.g. their faith, or because they are somehow responsible, as an entire faith community, for the actions of a limited few). Orientalism, scientific racism and now racialisation based on ethnicity, cultural and religious category suggest institutionalised Islamophobia: wholesale, widespread, menacing and omnipotent. Islamophobia takes attention away from structural racism, which further institutionalises Islamophobia. A deeper understanding of Muslim differences in society reorients others interested in Islam and Muslims toward the counter-terrorism/countering violent extremism space, while Muslims outside of this realm are not only rendered homogenous but, crucially, invisible (AminKhan 2012). This homogeneity is not open-ended, diverse or layered with class, racial, sectarian and cultural characteristics but rather a more sinister representation of Muslims as various threats to society. Engagement with Muslims is restricted to a focus on problems seemingly emanating from a Muslim cosmos. By potentially relegating anti-Muslim hatred to the realm of counter-terrorism, it further absolves the state’s responsibility in relation to Muslims everywhere else in society. Present-day Islamophobia is the normalisation of anti-Muslim hatred that has grown exponentially since the outset of the ‘war on terror’ culture that began after the events of 9/11. During this time, intolerance, bigotry and the development of alt-right, far right, radical left and other religious extremist groups have found succor in the vacuum of dominant discourses to stabilise societies that provide opportunities, as well as outcomes, for the many, not the few. These cumulative extremisms at the margins of society incubate the discourses of intolerance and hate that allow these subgroups and their ideas to foment. Radicalisation is intimately tied up with Islamophobia. Fanned by the internet, which acts as an echo chamber, and present politics, there are similar fires burning in the USA and across Europe. It is undoubtedly the case that there is a degree of virulent Islamophobia that bubbles to the surface time and time again, breaking down existing weak community relations, exacerbated by various media and political discourses that emphasise the unassimilability of Muslim minorities. However, the number of Muslims in the West, especially in parts of western Europe, will continue to rise relative to the indigenous population because of relatively higher birth rates. The visible residential concentration of Muslims in certain parts of towns and cities creates consternation among commentators who argue that there is a problem of Islamisation, which has the effect of making majority groups even more fearful of difference, of others. That majority populations repeatedly overemphasise the numbers of Muslim minorities in their countries is no accident. The events of the Grenfell Tower tragedy reaffirmed the state’s neoliberal, majoritarian nationalist, anti-immigration, anti-European and anti-Muslim hegemonic narrative defined by years of neglect, allowing shoddy practices to linger, paying little or no attention to criticism of 39

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policy from all other sectors of society. Austerity policy since the 2008 economic crash has led to instability, populism and uncertainty. It is hyper-normalisation in post-normal times, where the state has no clear idea of where to take the nation. British Muslims are relegated to a lowly position as the next few years will be all about Brexit and its implications – which erupted out of an unnecessary xenophobic, Islamophobic, anti-European, anti-human rights discourse reflecting an internal Tory party battle running for four decades.

Concluding thoughts Since the events of 9/11, there has emerged not only Islamophobia industry but also a (de)radicalisation industry orchestrated by various governments in attempt to placate domestic and foreign policy and to focus on group differences as the cause of extremism. As part of this experience, a body of people have come forward with various initiatives to support the government in relation to the causes and the solutions of Islamic political radicalism (Kundnani 2009). It sustains the view that the problem of violent extremism rests within the religion and culture of specific groups rather than the workings of society (Abbas 2011). It takes away tension from concerns relating to structural disadvantage and discrimination, which are arguably the more significant drivers that affect young Muslim men in declining urban areas (Alexander 2004). In conclusion, various periods in Britain’s social and political history of have determined a natural rate of racism as applied to Muslims through Islamophobia and radicalisation. External to the British Muslim communities there are specific instances of anti-Muslim rhetoric that have permeated public and private institutions, political systems and a general rhetoric in relation to an ‘us’ and ‘them’ divide sustained by an elite racial discourse. This has sought to securitise integration and diversity as well as institutionalise securitisation in relation to education, the charity sector and other civil society organisations. Internal to the British Muslim communities are issues of low education, high unemployment, poor health and limited housing as realisations of structural disadvantage and discrimination. Muslim communities also suffer from limited political participation and representation. These issues have grown to become more problematic in the light of the ‘war on terror’ culture and the policing and incarceration of young Muslims who suffer the deleterious consequences of deindustrialisation, technological innovation and the internationalisation of capital, with former working class groups also seeking direction, recognition and opportunity in relation to their own lived experiences. The causes of Islamophobia and radicalisation relate to social mobility, anomie, political disenfranchisement, national identity crisis, neoliberal globalisation with the effects seen in anger, fear, loathing, intimidation and violence. This Islamophobia is therefore political, cultural and economic. It has the effect of inducing radicalisation of both Islamist and far right groups, based on counter-competing ideological perspectives take shape at the bottom of society among groups who are competing for the least in society. The challenge is that both the Islamophobia and radicalisation need to be taken seriously as a problem for society as a whole. Until then, with ongoing geopolitical concerns in relation to the Muslim world, widening social divisions because of neoliberal globalisation and as national identities falter due to limited recognition of differences, the challenges far outweigh the opportunities.

References Abbas, T. 2007. Muslim Minorities in Britain: Integration, Multiculturalism and Radicalism in the Post-7/7 Period. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 28 (3), 287–300. Abbas, T. 2011. Islamic Radicalism and Multicultural Politics: the British Experience, London: Routledge. 40

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Abbas, T. 2017. Ethnicity and Politics in Contextualising Far Right and Islamist Extremism. Perspectives on Terrorism, 11 (3), 54–61. Alexander, C. 2004. Imagining the Asian Gang: Ethnicity, Masculinity and Youth after ‘the Riots’. Critical Social Policy, 24 (4), 526–549. Allen, C. 2011. Opposing Islamification or Promoting Islamophobia? Understanding the English Defence League. Patterns of Prejudice, 45 (4), 279–294. Allievi, S. 2012. Reactive Identities and Islamophobia: Muslim Minorities and the Challenge of Religious Pluralism in Europe. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 38 (4–5), 379–387. Amin, A. 2002. Ethnicity and Multicultural City: Living with Diversity. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 34 (6), 959–980. Amin-Khan, T. 2012. New Orientalism, Securitisation and the Western Media’s Incendiary Racism. Third World Quarterly, 33 (9), 1595–1610. Anderson, B., 1992. Imagined Communities. London: Verso. Back, L., Keith, M., Khan, A., Shukra, K. and Solomos, J. 2009. Islam and the New Political Landscape: Faith Communities, Political Participation and Social Change. Theory Culture Society, 26 (4), 1–23. Cole, M. 2009. Critical Race Theory Comes to the UK: A Marxist Response. Ethnicities, 9 (2), 246–284. Ebner, J. 2017. The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism. London: I. B. Tauris. El-Haj, T. R. A. and Bonet, S. W. 2011. Education, Citizenship, and the Politics of Belonging: Youth from Muslim Transnational Communities and the ‘War on Terror’. Review of Research in Education, 35, 29–59. Esposito, J. L. and Kalin, I. (eds) 2011. Islamophobia: The Challenge of Pluralism in the 21st Century. New York: Oxford University Press. Heath-Kelly, C. 2012. Counter-Terrorism and the Counterfactual: Producing the ‘Radicalisation’ Discourse and the UK ‘Prevent’ Strategy. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 15 (3), 394–415. Hirsch, A. 2018. On Race, Identity and Belonging. London: Jonathan Cape. Josse, P. 2017. Leaderless Resistance and the Loneliness of Lone Wolves: Exploring the Rhetorical Dynamics of Lone Actor Violence. Terrorism and Political Violence, 29 (1), 52–78. Khalili, L. 2017. After Brexit: Reckoning With Britain’s Racism and Xenophobia. Poem: International English Language Quarterly, 5 (2–3), 253–265. Kumar, D. 2010. Framing Islam: The Resurgence of Orientalism during the Bush II Era. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 34 (3), 254–277. Kundnani, A. 2009. Radicalisation: The Journey of a Concept. Race & Class, 54 (2), 3–25. Lentin, A. and Titley, G. 2012. The Crisis of ‘Multiculturalism’ in Europe: Mediated Minarets, Intolerable Subjects. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 15 (2), 123–138. Mishra, P. 2017. Age of Anger: A History of the Present. London: Allen Lane. Runnymede Trust. 1997. Islamophobia: A Danger for Us All. London: Runnymede Trust. Saha, A. 2012. ‘Beards, Scarves, Halal Meat, Terrorists, Forced Marriage’: Television Industries and the Production of ‘Race’. Media, Culture & Society, 34 (4), 424–438. Samad, Y. 1992. Book Burning and Race Relations: Political Mobilisation of Bradford Muslims. New Community, 18 (4), 507–519. Sayyid, S. and Vakil, A. K. (eds) (2011). Thinking through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives. New York: Hurst/Columbia University Press. Thomas, P. and Sanderson, P. 2011. Unwilling Citizens? Muslim Young People and National Identity. Sociology, 45 (6), 1028–1044. Troyna, B. 1987. Beyond Multiculturalism: Towards the Enactment of Anti-racist Education in Policy, Provision and Pedagogy. Oxford Review of Education, 13 (3), 307–320. Tyrer, D. and Sayyid, S. 2012. Governing Ghosts: Race, Incorporeality and Difference in Post-political Times. Current Sociology, 60 (3), 353–367. Weller, P. 2006. Addressing Religious Discrimination and Islamophobia: Muslims and Liberal Democracies. The Case of the United Kingdom. Journal of Islamic Studies, 17 (3), 295–325. Williamson, M. and Khiabany, G. 2011. State, Culture and Anti-Muslim Racism. Global Media and Communication, 7 (3), 175–179. World Policy Institute. 2011. Anatomy of Islamophobia. World Policy Journal, 28 (4), 14–15.

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4 A multidimensional model of understanding Islamophobia A comparative practical analysis of the US, Canada, UK and France Saied Reza Ameli and Arzu Merali

Introduction Islamophobia has a long history. Since Islam appeared in a world full of pervasive idolatry and ignorance, from the very beginning, the atmosphere of fear of Islam and the Prophet of Islam, Mohammadophobia was formed and promoted by opponents of the Prophet. This type of Islamophobia should be seen as an internal Islamophobia, formed on the Al-Arabi Island, centred around the Umayyad Caliphate, along with extreme Islamophobia with the central role played by Byzantium. Islamophobia creates a sort of intergroup (Hopkins and Shook 2017), interreligious group anxiety between Muslims and non-Muslims, and this is the area which can cause social isolation, a sense of being outside the group, or more radically can take the form of social conflict and unpredictable social animosity, culminating in hate crime against each other, or even mass destruction arising out of a previous xenophobia like Japanophobia, which culminated in the genocides of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to Cheng (2015), Islamophobia or Muslimophobia is not discrimination against a particular nation or ethnic group, or even specific individuals or society, it is pressure against Islam and Muslims. Islamophobia is an extension of xenophobia, otherisation, social discrimination and racialisation (Ameli 2017). Islamophobia is neither simply the violations experienced by Muslims nor is it simply (and or in addition) policy or structure that results in the negative representation of Islam, Muslims and Islamic governance. It is not a new phenomenon, nor is it one that only affects Muslims. Xenophobia in different forms, whether policies, representation and ideology in relation to many nations, has taken place throughout history through at the hands of many groups and nation states. The emergence of the instant communication industry, global media, social and network media has reinforced the power of xenophobic content (Törnberg and Törnberg 2016). There are a variety of views on Islamophobia. Some of these theories have essentially questioned the existence of Islamophobia. In another view, Islamophobia is considered as a phenomenon and its economic, cultural and political dimensions have been discussed. Regardless of the 42

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two-fold approach to the existence or absence of Islamophobia, there are different approaches to Islamophobia. From a cultural and social point of view, Islamophobia has been studied in terms of social discrimination, xenophobia, the destruction of the rights of minorities, and the mutation of Muslims in non-Muslim countries into a diasporic society. The economic impact of Islamophobia and, for example, the impact of Islamophobia on the military industrial complex has been less widely considered. Xenophobia in general and Islamophobia in particular, is one of the common tactics used to create an environment of fear in relations between countries and, consequently, warm up trade in military weapons and the business of war to prepare against illusory threats. In fact, Islamophobia has an economic infrastructure that even overlooks even the strategic arenas of regional relations. For what reason should billions of dollars be spent on weapons of mass destruction? The answer is to create an environment of fear, sense of danger and threat to national security, which justifies the allocation of resources for military purposes. Business and economy are therefore the cause of Islamophobia, a variation on the xenophobia which throughout history has been formed in relation to different subjects and nations such as Japan and Russia between the First and the Second World War, and after the Second World War. The relationship between Islamophobia and the media, as well as new media such as representation of Islam and Muslims in social media, has attracted a great deal of research. Misrepresentation of Muslim women through Islamophobic labelling is another frame of understanding which some of the research has examined. In other words, Islamophobia, on the basis of academic and field priorities, is of political concern. Some of these approaches have focused on cultural aspects and have concentrated on xenophobia, segregation, social discrimination, and the marginalisation of the Muslim community or how Islamophobia as social policy or social strategy can affect the lives, the responses of Muslims and their reaction to them. Some of these studies are concerned with the social impact of Islamophobia through media representation of Islam and Muslims. Ahmed Al-Rawi (2014), in his paper on ‘the representation of September 11th and American Islamophobia in non-Western Cinema’, investigated the way some non-Western films on 9/11 attack have affected the lives of Muslims living in the West and their homelands. In this study, the notion of a unified umma and that Muslim countries are homogeneous has been rejected. His conclusion is that despite the differences in cultures and people’s backgrounds, they are not at war as they share similar values and aspirations for peace, but foreign policies affect these relationships in today’s world and believers of religions should not be blamed or hated for the actions of a few unrepresentative members (ibid., p. 163). Drawing an equivalence between Islamophobia and anti-Semitism is another important facet of the literature and conceptualisation of Islamophobia (Bunzl 2005; Gingrich 2005; Klug 2014). The clear and obvious common feature of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism is that in both cases, religion is the centrepiece of social discrimination and the creation of fears and threats. In anti-Semitism, Jews, both as a religion and as an ethnic group, are linked to discrimination and violence. In Islamophobia, both Islam and Muslims are threatened and discriminated against, so if anti-Semitism is a crime, Islamophobia should also be considered a crime. The former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams (Merali 2018) refers to the pertinence of this analogy. Interviewees in the Counter-Narratives to Islamophobia project (ibid.) see the analogy as highlighting the commonality of (potential) experience, and also terms of recognition by the state with regard to recognition and policy-making. Rajina (2017, cited in Merali 2018) highlights the existence and relative security of some Jewish schools in Stamford Hill, London where the experience and institutions of the Jewish community provide for her examples of good practice. In maintaining an eastern European, Yiddish-speaking identity some eight generations or more after arrival in the UK, there is ample scope for Muslims to emulate and government 43

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and local authorities to adopt in their approach to Muslims. Rajina points to the fact that there are many schools in that community which are known to be failing schools but which have been largely left alone by the authorities because of the community’s ‘putting their foot down’. As an example to Muslim communities this is illustrative of how a confident and determined community can face off hostility from the authorities to maintain their access to the institutions without external harassment. Kundnani (in Merali 2018) highlights that the Muslim community’s failure to draw a red line with the government over the Trojan Horse affair was a miscalculation that has resulted in increased harassment. As a recommendation to civil society, establishing boundaries over issues affecting the community is part of a long-term strategy that has in the case of some parts of the Jewish community in the UK been shown to have positive effects. This example bucks the narrative of minority conditionality imposed by Cameron (2007) as resting upon a critical conversation between the state and racialised minorities. Cameron claimed that the demands for Muslims to reform had a precedent in the conversations fifty years ago between state and non-Jewish communities on one side and the Jewish community on the other over the possible conflicts between their identity and Britishness. It is implied in his speech that an assimilationist track taken by the Jewish community has led to their full acceptance in British society and that this is the route Muslims in the UK must take. This speech forms the basis of much policy and rests upon and reproduces various Islamophobic narratives of Muslims as an internal threat, disloyal and incompatible with the nation. It also revives similar anti-Semitic tropes by re-envisioning the history of Jewish communities in the UK, as recent, conditional and entirely socialised to the state, and is worthy of examination in regard to the rise of anti-Semitism in the UK in other research. Myriam François (quoted in Merali 2018) highlights also: the Jewish community; they have then had certain commissions put in place to assess the state of anti-Semitism in the UK and then policies can be devised off the back of those. We know that in the UK that has not been devised by the UK government in the same way for Muslims despite repeated claims to do that. Williams (in Merali 2018) sees trends and traits of Islamophobia that mirror the anti-Semitism in Europe of earlier years and asks why lessons have not been learned from this. In this chapter, the typology of Islamophobia as well as the Multidimensional Model of Understanding Islamophobia (MMUI) will be explained and a secondary analysis of data related to Islamophobic behaviour against Muslims in USA, Canada, UK and France will be discussed before elaborating on Islamophobia through the MMUI model in relation to DHMIR.

Typology of Islamophobia One typology of Islamophobia is in terms of periodisation of Islamophobia. Islamophobia can be divided into three periods of history: 1) Traditional Islamophobia related to the period of the beginning of Islam up to the emerging industrial world and the gradual formation of modernity. In this long period, the ‘civil’ or perhaps ideological and physical wars that began at the time of the Prophet between the old idolaters against the Prophet, his companions and the early Muslims, continued. However now, those opposed to Islamic thought and Muslim practice often took on the guise of Muslims and battled those forging ahead with multiple praxis of Islam in different theatres. One can call this type of Islamophobic war ‘Islam against Islam’ or 44

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‘religion against religion’. In the same period of time, external Islamophobia can be defined as confrontation between Christianity and Islam, which led to prolonged wars. Tagging and coding of Islam began by linking Islam with ignorance, barbarism, irrationality. At the same time, many false discourses were formed that Islam was a fake religion invented by Mohammed. For many centuries, instead of using the word Islam, opponents of Islam used the term Muhammadan. 2) Modern industrial Islamophobia: Modern Islamophobia is related to the emergence of the print industry and formation of modern philosophy. Modernism created a serious change in the philosophy of life. With the formation of the institutions of modernity, and the development of modernisation and liberalisation, conscious and unconscious changes entered into all aspects of life. This intellectual, institutional and process change in culture, politics and economics led to the great ideological changes, including secularisation, in all processes of life. This means that the relationship between religion and life has gradually diminished, and has been even accompanied by contradictions in the areas of religion and life, religion and work, religion and science, and even religion and leisure time. This path is another form of panic against all the great religions, especially Islam, which created a rival religion for the religion of Europe and the United States. On the other hand, the emergence of the printing and spinning industry was the beginning of mass production. Obviously, the industrialisation of printing provided the mass production of the message. Although the Enlightenment and the formation of modernity were marked by the emergence of the printing industry, the synchronisation of these two major social changes provided the capacity for the spread of Islamophobia both in terms of intellectual infrastructure and mass production technology. The emergence of mass media such as cinema, radio and television, and the press before them, provided more scope for representing phobia and hatred towards Islam and Muslims. 3) Modular instant Islamophobia: Modular instant Islamophobia refers to the instant communication environment which can make a modular connection between all users and the layers of the web’s content and social media. According to Barbara Schewick (2010), a modular environment, while providing independence for nodes of communication, creates the possibility for interconnection between modules as well as independent nodes of interaction. This means the possibility of instant connections between devices connected to people, information, things and processes (‘Internet of Everything’, or IoE) (Schatten, Ševa and Tomičić 2016) and the instant movement of messages locally, regionally and globally. Islamophobia can spread everywhere to one and all individuals and groups.

Multilateral Model of Understanding Islamophobia The first point we should highlight is that these days Islamophobia or the Islamophobic environment has become global. There is evidence, which shows the experience of hate and Islamophobic representation or presentation in the USA (Ameli, Mohseni Ahooei and Merali 2013), Canada (Hanniman 2008; Ameli and Merali 2014), Sweden (Hirvonen 2013), United Kingdom (Ameli and Merali 2015), France (Ameli, Merali and Shahghasemi 2012). Understanding Islamophobia requires a morphological look at all constituent elements and one also needs to understand phenomena at the macro level that express the totality of its nature. Islamophobia pursues economic, political and cultural goals, and can be understood and analysed in a multilateral, interconnected algorithm. At the same time, it can be said that cultural goals are the basis of economic and political goals. The multifaceted dimensions of Islamophobia lead to the formation of conditions and outcomes that are modelled in the hated society model of Islam. 45

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One consequence of hating society domination over the hated society is that the hated community might end up being mutated or isolated. On the other hand, the process of strengthening hatred from the path of re-creation, xenophobia, otherisation, segregation and isolation also has important consequences. In such a model, hateful elements and internal and external Islamophobia project the way forward for cultural ethnocide and genocide (Ameli 2017). In practice, understanding Islamophobia requires a wide, multidisciplinary approach. Islamophobia consists of political, cultural and economic dimensions and without integration of all these dimensions one cannot understand the phenomenon of Islamophobia, whether it is a reality or a figment of the imagination, whether it exists to what extent, and whether it is visible or invisible. 1) It is political since Islamophobia producers seek: a reduction in (perceived or real) Muslim power around the world; fragmentation of the Muslim community and intra-Muslim unity; and/or the engineering of different types of Muslims e.g. moderate(d) Muslims, traditional Muslims, modern and postmodern Muslims. Islamophobia works also as a source and reference for making distance between so-called Islamic values and ‘modern’ values in the minds of Muslims and non-Muslims. It is also a behavioural factor that has meaning before the law (in some countries) in the form of aggravation or intent, and in a more general sociological and psychological sense as a motivator for hate crime, discrimination and malign representation; an enabler of an environment of hate, a precursor and part of hate ideology and hate education against Muslims around the world. Islamophobia can be seen as an instrument for the justification of greater wars and minor wars against Muslims around the world as happened against the Japanese before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 2) Islamophobia is a cultural phenomenon in its effect on the culture of Muslim society and the intercultural relationship between non-Muslims and Muslims, on Muslim identity and its role in the unconscious change among Muslims, especially its effect on Muslim self-confidence and a weakening in the sense of pride and affiliation with Islam. 3) Further there are economic and business aspects of Islamophobia that serve as a facilitating factor. The more phobic and insecure the world, the better this is for the marketing of the technology of war. Islamophobia pursues at least four goals, which primarily include the destruction of the image of Muslims and, in a deeper dimension, the destruction of the image of Islam. In the next step, it seeks to separate the Muslim community from non-Muslims. The separation policy seeks to control Muslims’ influence on non-Muslims and somehow constrain the development of Islam. The third goal of Islamophobia is to legitimise war and to strengthen the development of the military industrial complex and the economy of war. The fourth result of Islamophobia is the creation of great fear by associating Islam with violence, assassination, murder and crime, and ultimately creating a fear among the non-Muslim communities of Islam and Muslims. These four outcomes are external consequences of Islamophobia, but the internal outcomes of Islamophobia are first the collapse of Muslims from the inside and the elimination of religious beliefs in the Muslim community and the transfer of a fictitious image of Islam and Muslims into Islamic societies. To a greater extent, the combination of external and internal Islamophobia will strengthen the groundwork of moving part of the Muslim community towards Western modernism and liberalism or liberal Islam. A large part of the Muslim community will respond to the stresses of Islamophobia with patience and forbearance in the cause of God. On the other hand, in a small section, there will be extremist behaviours and extremist responses both in the non-Muslim racially-based area and in the extremist Islamic area (Garner and Selod 2015). 46

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There are many factors, which can be considered accelerators of Islamophobic perception. Among the most important are palpable crises such as 9/11 or the calamitous actions of ISIS. Such a repulsive representation can easily lead to the perception that one is equal to all and all are equal to one or ISIS is equal to all Muslims and all Muslims are like ISIS.

Domination Hate Model of Intercultural Relations The Domination Hate Model of Intercultural Relations (DHMIR) was first developed in 2010 and since then it has been applied in several contexts in cooperation with IHRC’s research in the USA (Ameli, Mohseni Ahooei and Merali 2013), UK (Ameli and Merali 2015), Canada (Ameli and Merali 2014) and France (Ameli, Merali and Shahghasemi 2012). Ameli (2010) tries to include the many important factors in today’s complicated environment of hate. Much of what gets labelled ‘hate crime’ is more casual confrontation in which racist (or other hate language) is deployed. When a hate crime occurs, organised hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, skinheads or neo-Nazis are often blamed. However, in general, organised hate groups do not commit the majority of hate crimes. As noted in numerous studies, although hate crime offenders generally commit their crimes in groups, they are not usually affiliated with an organised hate group. DHMIR endeavours to reveal how an innocent citizen can turn into a hate crime offender. Indeed, this model does not try to exonerate hate crime offenders. Rather, it only draws attention to a complicated process in which the hate crime offenders become passive implementers. In this model, Ameli claims that the interest groups design a campaign of xenophobia. Hate is disseminated in the society by means of media and hate representation. For certain, the media in any culture is in the hands of those who are in power. After producing a public panic, a hate environment comes into existence gradually. In the hate environment, every act against those who supposedly pose a threat to society becomes plausible. It is here that hate crime offenders are motivated and when the media report these attacks, the hate crime offenders find themselves represented alone as the perpetrator without any context. All of these processes are governed and directed by hate policy. This particular approach to hate crimes denies the simple linear relationship between perpetrators and victims of hatred and shows better the complexity of interactions between the hated and hating society. In addition, this model recognises the hate crimes holistically and therefore does not regard hate crimes as a product of a particular social or media event. Societies are different in terms of social structure. In some societies, intercultural tolerance is more ethical or customary than other societies. This situation has a direct impact on the nature and severity of the emergence and ideology of hatred. Hate ideology is the result of inhumane inter-cultural approaches that historically uses identity components such as race, religion, and gender to justify hate. Communities with a hatred-based social structure, with sophisticated techniques and strategies, reproduce their common values based on social differentiation in ways that are consistent with changing detrimental global attitudes of hatred and discrimination. These types of ideologies, for example, by linking a particular religion with an inhuman situation like terrorism, provide legitimacy for the necessity of hatred. In societies with a hatred-based social structure the media does not work the same way in representing two similar crimes. For example they do not refer to the offender’s religion in representing a Christian criminal offender, but they emphasise the religion of a Muslim offender and may even link news reports to other cases of Muslim perpetrated crimes. This kind of representation, rather than action directed by specific individuals or social groups, is a product of the hating society that tries to produce the reasons for the legitimacy of the hate ideology. The relationship 47

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Figure 4.1  The Domination Hate Model of Intercultural Relations.

between hate practice and hate ideology is reciprocal. The ideology of hatred requires facts that support its legitimacy for survival. The hateful acts put these facts at the disposal of hate ideology. On the other hand, hate ideology supports the legitimacy and requirement of hate policy and hate media representation. All of these create the necessary context for the development of hate practices in society, and more importantly, it transforms these hatreds into unproblematic behaviours. In other words, this continuous cycle considers hatred as a natural occurrence. The behaviour of other out-groups (the hating society/ies) to out-groups targeted by a hate environment (the hated society) is modelled by the operation of this environment, thus acts of hatred are more often committed by individuals who feel provoked into doing so at the sight of someone from an out-group rather than by organised groups e.g. far-right groups. They act out – essentially operationalise – the social construction of difference that hate representation and ideological hatred encourage (Ameli and Merali 2014). As Figure 4.1 shows, the DHMIR also relates the hated society to the hating society to show how these two societies share many common interests, not least humanitarian ones. Conflict, or as DHMIR shows, accelerated conflict, will create a sphere of action in which no one is a winner.

Background and methodology The analyses presented in this chapter compare the data provided by five surveys on hate crimes and anti-Muslim experiences experienced by Muslims conducted by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) in four western European and American countries: Getting the Message: The Recurrence of Hate Crimes in the UK (Ameli, Mohseni Ahooei and Shaghasemi 2011), France and the Hated Society: Muslim Experiences (Ameli, Merali and Shahghasemi 2012), Once Upon a Hatred: Anti-Muslim Experiences in the USA (Ameli, Mohseni Ahooei and Merali 2013), Only 48

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Canadian: The Experience of Hate Moderated Differential Citizenship for Muslims (Ameli and Merali 2014), and Environment of Hate: The New Normal for Muslims in the UK (Ameli and Merali 2015). The data collection in all this research is conducted based on ‘data triangulation’ (Denzin 2006). Instead of relying on a particular type of data, data triangulation makes it possible to concentrate on three different data sources, while avoiding reductionism in understanding the causes of a phenomenon, as well as the relationship of the phenomenon under consideration with its historical and social background. In fact, one of the fundamental difficulties in analysing such issues is the adoption of an abstract approach and the analysis of the phenomenon, regardless of its context. The first source of the research data collection includes a historical review of the subject as well as the review of all the research conducted in the area. The second and the third sources are quantitative and qualitative surveys that are conducted in a seamless and parallel way. These surveys cover a wide range of demographics including gender, areas of countries with a high Muslim population (as well as areas with a significantly low Muslim population and in between) gender, a variety of ages, ethnic backgrounds, marital statuses, work statuses, employment sector, levels of education, categories of income groups, countries of birth and citizenship, self-deemed levels of religious practice and of course visibility of ‘Muslimness’. The qualitative survey questions sought to elicit the respondents’ views as well as lived experiences (Jansen 2010) on societal/governmental perception of Muslims, feelings on whether religiously motivated acts of hate are dealt with adequately, causes of racist/Islamophobic culture, if institutions such as the media contribute to such cultures, the role, and effects on the behaviour of Muslims, etc. In contrast, the quantitative surveys categorised experiences into five sections: • • • • •

interpersonal Islamophobia; ideological Islamophobia; Islamophobic policy; discrimination and double discrimination; and intercultural sensitivity.

The surveys were carried out between 2009 and 2014. The difference in the data collected in each country has made it difficult to match the results. This led to the comparison of just three axes of interpersonal Islamophobia, ideological Islamophobia and Islamophobic policy in the present comparative analysis. Also in the case of ‘verbal abuse’, there was no data for the USA indicated in the corresponding graph. In all surveys, three sampling methods of snowball (Goodman 1961; Salganik and Heckathorn 2004; Browne 2005), clustering (Kerry and Bland 1998), and simple random (Yates et al. 2008; Meng 2013) have been used in combination. The fieldwork consisted of a collection of qualitative and quantitative surveys, made up of hard copies and the surveys that were conducted online. The snowball method is a way of reaching Muslim populations in each country and building confidence in the research process so that individuals can express their real experiences easily. On the other hand, since research on all individuals of Islamic populations is not possible, the cluster sampling method has been used. In this way, we have reached groups of Islamic populations in each country. In the third step and in each cluster, a simple random sampling method was used to reach the homogeneous collection sample of the Muslim community in each country. In this way, by comparing the characteristics of the sample population with the research community, research generalisation can be made possible. Besides the sampling methods employed, the number of samples per survey is matched according to the population of the survey’s community. This is done by using Cochran’s sample 49

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size formula (Cochran 1953). Using results from the United Kingdom Census of 2011, for example, giving the UK Muslim population as 2,786,635 (4.4% of the total population), the last survey, Environment of Hate: The New Normal for Muslims in the UK (Ameli and Merali 2015), according to Cochran’s sample size formula, suggests 384 cases as the minimum number of samples needed for generalising the results to such a community. However, the number of samples for this survey is 1,800 cases. Such a rule is applied to all other surveys. The basis for analysis in the collection of hate crimes surveys was the use of the median, mean, and mode. In other words, the main part of the analyses was descriptive and based on three simple statistical tests. Convenience of analysis, the simplicity of understanding the statistics and maximum clarity are the main reasons for using descriptive analyses (Trochim 2006; Babbie 2009). In addition, whenever there is a significant relationship between demographic variables and studying variables, the correlation tests have also been used to determine the impact of demographic variables on the experience of hate crimes. Since all the measures were at the nominal or sequential level, all correlation tests are performed based on the chi-square or its related tests (Ryabko, Stognienko and Shokin 2004). In many cases, the impact of specific variables such as gender, age and the level of education was evident in the experience of hate crimes, which are reflected in the analyses. In addition, the ability of this test in ‘normalising’ (Nikulin 1973) is used for cases where the data ratio in the sample was different from the actual proportion in the community being surveyed. We also found in the research process that Muslims are not willing to narrate their very acute experiences for reasons such as privacy (Babbie 2009). Victims, for example, generally have little desire to describe their sexual harassment in order to avoid audience judgments. Also, although, because of their Islamic dress codes, women are more likely to be victims of hate crimes than men, they are less likely to disclose details of events that threatened them physically or mentally. The fear of judgment, stigma, misunderstanding, punishment, or aggression prevents victims from exposing their experiences. So, although, our effort was to glean the maximum amount of data, the ethical and professional barriers of research prevented us from doing so. In other words, we have only been able to see the part of the iceberg that is above the surface of the water and we do not have any idea about the hidden part of these experiences and their degree of deterioration.

Interpersonal Islamophobia Comparing the experiences in seven categories in the range of verbal abuse and physical assault shows, in general, the intensity of the sense of belonging to an Islamophobic society. Comparing the results of the surveys in four countries indicates Muslims in the United Kingdom are more likely to encounter Islamophobic expression, behaviour, and actions in their everyday life. In contrast, Muslims in France report relatively fewer Islamophobic experiences. However, the quality of such harassments is not the same. Under physical assaults, for example, a few people reported a continuous confrontation, but such experiences are so repulsive that even the low stated percentages are significant enough to consider.

Ideological Islamophobia Another kind of Islamophobia relates to religious beliefs of Muslims. Religious challenges in the workplace, school or college, and hearing Islamophobic comments are some illustrations of this kind of hatred. This hatred mostly depends on Islamophobic attitudes. The intensity of Muslim experiences in this area is also remarkable and consistent among the studied countries.

50

8.2

17.3

22.5 19.8 25.0 18.9

UK 2011–2015

2.5 France 2012

6.2 8.2 7.4

15.1 14.6 11.2

USA 2013

41.8

32.3 18

19.8 22.5 20.3 32.1

7.3 Canada 2014

15.2 17.2 18.3 18.9 15.5

34.3

Physical assaults

Being ignored in public places

Being treated in a superficial manner

Being treated or wrongly accused

Being talked down to

Verbal abuse

Being stared at by strangers

Figure 4.2 Intensity of categories related to interpersonal Islamophobia. (In the cases of physical assaults and verbal abuse, there were no data respectively for the UK and the USA.)

UK 2011–2015 France 2012

25.8 13.8

USA 2013 Canada 2014

Figure 4.3  Intensity of ideological Islamophobia experienced by Muslims.

25.7 23.7

S. R. Ameli and A. Merali

Islamophobic policy The third type of Islamophobia is that of policymakers and media. This sort of Islamophobia is more significant than the others, especially because of its extent and overall influence in legitimising Islamophobia in societies. This systematic Islamophobia can also be observed as the origin of interpersonal Islamophobia which Muslims experience in their everyday life. The regular experience of Islamophobic policy in the United Kingdom, the USA, and Canada, sequentially, is 43.3 per cent, 42.5 per cent, and 37.2 per cent. French Muslims experience relatively less intensity (24.4 per cent) of Islamophobic policies. Witnessing or hearing Islamophobia Observing political policies affecting Islam Hearing Islamophobic comments by politicians Seeing negative stereotypes in media 35.4 UK 2011–2015

9.6 France 2012

51.6

42.8

32.3 31.4

69.1

50.2

32 USA 2013

44.9 27.0

Canada 2014

50.5 51.2

46.5 38.2 43.2

Figure 4.4  Intensity of Islamophobic policy experienced by Muslims.

Figure 4.5  Comparison of three sorts of Islamophobic experiences by intensity. 52

A multidimensional model

Comparing the three sorts of Islamophobia experienced by Muslims shows that two types of ideological Islamophobia and Islamophobic policy are respectively highest by percentage. In other words, Muslims perceive these two types of Islamophobia more than the interpersonal one. This can be a reason for the greater effect of these two sorts of Islamophobia on their lives. Furthermore, the severity of the experience of the three main themes of Islamophobia among countries shows some variation. In general, the experience of all themes of Islamophobia in France has been lower than in other countries, and conversely, the greatest experience across all types is in the UK. Also, while the experience of ideological Islamophobia among Muslims in the UK and France shows the greatest intensity of experiences (47.8 and 32 per cent, respectively), the USA and Canada have the highest scores when it comes to Islamophobic policy (42.5 and 37.2 per cent respectively). It is said that females are more exposed to discrimination and the experience of Islamophobia because they are often more visible as Muslim in terms of their clothing. Also, one can assume that the patriarchal approach of the countries under study leads to a kind of dual discrimination against females in that they suffer both gender and religious discrimination. However, the Interpersonal Islamophobia

UK 2011–2015

France 2012

USA 2013

Canada 2014

Ideological Islamophobia

24.2

47.4

12.3

32.0

20.7

43.3

24.4

42.5

38.5

18.1

Islamophobic policy

33.5

37.2

Figure 4.6  Intensity of Islamophobia experienced by Muslims.

Male

UK 2011–2015

France 2012

USA 2013

Canada 2014

53.4

38.7

52.9

46.6

Female

46.6

61.3

47.1

53.4

Figure 4.7  Intensity of Islamophobia experienced by gender. 53

S. R. Ameli and A. Merali

results do not confirm these assumptions. Apart from France where females (61.3 per cent) are significantly more exposed than males (38.7 per cent) to Islamophobic experiences, in other countries, there is little difference in the extent of the experience of Islamophobia between the two genders. In terms of the relationship between socio-economic class and the intensity of the experience of Islamophobia, there is no significant difference between countries. Major experiences of Islamophobia are experienced by middle-class Muslims in all studied countries. However, in the US and Canada, higher class also significantly exacerbates the experience of Islamophobia. And finally, although in all countries the highest proportion of Islamophobia experienced is among Muslim youth, comparing the severity of the experience of Islamophobia among the four countries in terms of age rating indicates some differences. While Canada has the lowest rate of Islamophobia for teenage Muslims (5.6 per cent), this figure is more than doubled in the UK (11.4 per cent). By contrast, in the USA and Canada (6.8 and 5.8 per cent respectively), the highest rates of Islamophobia have been experienced by elderly Muslims. Comparative analysis reveals the existence of acute issues of Islamophobia in all studied countries, but it also appears Lower income

Middle income

36.2

56.8

UK 2011–2015

39.7

France 2012

Higher income

7

55.5

4.8

USA 2013

21.6

63.9

14.5

Canada 2014

21.5

65.6

12.9

Figure 4.8  Intensity of Islamophobia experienced by social and economic class. Teenager

Youth

UK 2011–2015 11.4

France 2012 8.7

USA 2013 10.1

Canada 2014 5.6

Middle age

63

49.5

55.4

69.7

Figure 4.9  Intensity of Islamophobia experienced by age. 54

Elderly

24

39

27.7

1.6

2.8

6.8

18.9 5.8

A multidimensional model

from the analysis of data that the pattern of Islamophobia is different in each of these four countries. The patterns of Islamophobia in the UK and the USA are most similar. More than other countries, the Islamophobic experiences in these two countries impact more on the youth and the middle class. Also, in both countries, Islamophobic policy is the type of Islamophobia that is most experienced. The pattern of Islamophobia in France, however, is relatively limited and decentralised (in terms of demographic variables). The Muslims of this country suffer most of all from the negative experiences in the field of religious rituals. Finally, in Canada, the pattern of Islamophobia is more consistent with other social discrimination patterns such as gender, age, and socio-economic class discriminations.

Conclusion: Islamophobia/Islamoromia and macro change policy of the world From what has been said in this chapter, conceptual dimensions and different approaches to Islamophobia were introduced, and a kind of typology of Islamophobia was introduced that was unique in its own right. In addition, a model has been developed based on dimensions of Islamophobia. The fact is that Islamophobia cannot be attributed to an agent. On the other hand, Islamophobia cannot only be attributed to specific circumstances, such as 9/11 (USA), 7/7 (UK), or the emergence of ISIS. Major events attributed to Muslims or Islam cannot explain the nature of Islamophobia. Rather, it must take into account the complex dimensions of Islamophobia. On the other hand, field evidence suggests that Islamophobia is on the rise. Field studies conducted in the United States, Canada, France and the United Kingdom, which were compared in this study, confirm the development and diversity of Islamophobia and sense of being hated by society and the political system. The Multidimensional Model of Understanding Islamophobia (MMUI) in relation to the Domination Hate Model of Intercultural Relations (DHMIR) showed how, on the one hand, cultural and political and economic structures and objectives such as macro-dominant factors affect Islamophobia. On the other hand, it showed how the interconnection between the related factors pictured in the model of DHMIR can affect intercultural and interreligious communication and even impact negatively on communication between individuals. But the key is to understand that Islamophobia exists at the macro level as a major policy aimed at changing the relationship between the world of Islam and the West. Islamophobia is understandable if divided into soft Islamophobia and hard Islamophobia, with the aim of weakening Islamic countries and developing the dominance of the Western world. Examples of soft Islamophobia include images of poverty in the Muslim world, the lack of democracy and gender equality all around the Muslim regions, and the lack of human rights in Muslim countries. Examples of hard-hitting Islamophobia include the terrible violence that has been carried out by ISIS over the years, the brutal behaviour of Muslims, the spirit of warring, and codification of the Islamic world with bombs and warfare. It is assumed that in order to change the status of the Islamic world and relationship between Islam and the West, Islamophobia as a pushing policy, together with Islamoromia (Ameli 2012) as a pulling policy, seeks to change the status of Islamic countries in the international community and integrate them into the western political system and western way of life. Islamoromia means looking at the nature of Islam from the perspective of Western doctrines. Based on this assumption, Islamophobia is not just a matter of hatred against Muslims in a particular region of the world, but a macro policy for changing power relations and effecting major changes in the Islamic world. This type of Islamophobia/Islamoromia policy seeks to integrate Islamic nations into the Western world not as members but as subordinate political and cultural dependants of the West. This policy is a new form of colonialism against the Muslim world. 55

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References Al-Rawi, A. 2014. The Representation of September 11th and American Islamophobia in Non-Western Cinema. Media, War & Conflict, 7 (2), 152–164. Ameli, S. R. 2010. Domination Hate Model of Intercultural Relations (DHMIR). Public speech in the Faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran. Ameli, S. R. 2012. Bibliographical Discourse Analysis: The Western Academic Perspectiv on Islam, Muslims and Islamic Countries (1949–2009), 4 vols. London: Islamic Human Rights Commission. Ameli, S. R. 2017. American Exceptionalism, Eurocentrism and Otherisation of Muslims. London: Algorithm. Ameli, S. R. and Merali, A. 2014. Only Canadian: The Experience of Hate Moderated Differential Citizenship for Muslims. London: Islamic Human Rights Commission. Ameli, S. R. and Merali, A. 2015. Environment of Hate: The New Normal for Muslims in the UK. London: Islamic Human Rights Commission. Ameli, S. R., Merali, A., and Shahghasemi, E. 2012. France and the Hated Society: Muslim Experiences. London: Islamic Human Rights Commission Publication. Ameli, S. R., Mohseni Ahooei, E., and Merali, A. 2013. Once Upon a Hatred: Anti-Muslim Experiences in the USA. London: Islamic Human Rights Commission Publication. Ameli, S. R., Mohseni Ahooei, E., and Shahghasemi, E. 2011. Getting the Message: The Recurrence of Hate Crimes in the UK. London: Islamic Human Rights Commission. Babbie, E. R. 2009. The Practice of Social Research. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Browne, K. 2005. Snowball Sampling: Using Social Networks to Research Non-heterosexual Women. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 8 (1), 47–60. Bunzl, M. 2005. Between Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Some Thoughts on the New Europe. American Ethnologist, 32 (4), 499–508. Cameron, D. 2007. No-one Will Be Left behind in a Tory Britain. The Guardian, 28 January. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/jan/28/comment.conservatives. Cheng, J. E. 2015. Islamophobia, Muslimophobia or Racism? Parliamentary Discourses on Islam and Muslims in Debates on the Minaret Ban in Switzerland. Discourse & Society, 26 (5), 562–586. Cochran, W. 1953. Sampling Techniques. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Denzin, N. K. 2006. Triangulation: A Case For Methodological and Combination Evaluation. In N. K. Denzin (ed.), Sociological Methods. A Sourcebook, 5th edn (pp. 471–522). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Garner, S. and Selod, S. 2015. The Racialization of Muslims: Empirical Studies of Islamophobia. Critical Sociology, 41 (1), 9–19. Gingrich, A. 2005. Anthropological Analyses of Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism in Europe. American Ethnologist, 32 (4), 513–515. Goodman, L. A. 1961. Snowball sampling. Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 32 (1), 148–170. Hanniman, W. 2008. Canadian Muslims, Islamophobia and National Security. International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, 36, 271–285. Hirvonen, K. 2013. Sweden: When Hate Becomes the Norm. Race & Class, 55 (1), 78–86. Hopkins, P. D. and Shook, N. J. 2017. Development of an Intergroup Anxiety toward Muslims Scale. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 61, 7–20. Jansen, H. 2010. The Logic of Qualitative Survey Research and its Position in the Field of Social Research Methods. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 11 (2), art. 11. Kerry, A. and Bland, E. 1998. Statistics Notes: The Intracluster Correlation Coefficient in Cluster Randomization. British Medical Journal, 316, 1455–1460. Klug, B. 2014. The Limits of Analogy: Comparing Islamophobia and Antisemitism. Patterns of Prejudice, 48 (5), 442–459. Meng, X. 2013. Scalable Simple Random Sampling and Stratified Sampling. Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML-13), 531–539. Merali, A. 2018. Counter-narratives to Islamophobia – United Kingdom. Counter-Islamophobia Toolkit, Working Paper 14, University of Leeds. Retrieved from https://cik.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/ sites/36/2018/03/2018.03.19-WS2-UK-AM-Final-.pdf Nikulin, M.S. 1973. Chi-squared Test for Normality. In Proceedings of the International Vilnius Conference on Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics, vol. 2, 119–122. Rajina, F. 2017. Interview with A. Merali. In A. Merali, Counter-Islamophobia Kit: Workstream 2: Dominant Counter-Narratives to Islamophobia. Retrieved from https://cik.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/ 36/2018/03/2018.03.19-WS2-UK-AM-Final-.pdf. 56

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5 Mapping and mainstreaming Islamophobia Between the illiberal and liberal Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter

Introduction In the aftermath of the attack on the office of Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, the statement ‘Je suis Charlie’ spread throughout Paris, France and much of the Western world. The public narrative was clear: this was an attack on freedom of speech, one of the supposed pillars of our democracy. Charlie Hebdo’s journalists were proclaimed as martyrs and their courage was symbolised in the 2006 publication of provocative cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed. They did what ‘we’ were afraid to do and mourning their loss seemed insufficient: ‘we’ must identify if not become them in solidarity and resistance. Somewhat contradictorily, criticising this essentialist and absolutist vision of understanding fell outside of freedom of speech and was considered something akin to cowardice if not treason. Yet, despite such discrepancies at the core of the hegemonic discourse explored elsewhere (Mondon and Winter 2017a, 2017b), the overall pattern is familiar: widespread and normalised criticism of an essentialised Muslim threat for its hatred of ‘our’ liberal freedom and tolerant societies, even as ‘our’ countries pass – and the population at large chooses to ignore – counter-terrorism and extremism legislation that curtails those very freedoms. This has become commonplace since US President George W. Bush (2001) stated in his 9/11 address, prior to the establishment of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act, ‘They hate our freedoms’. This was followed by First Lady Laura Bush’s justification of the US invasion of Afghanistan as based on the need to liberate women and girls (Gerstenzang and Getter 2001). Islam has become central to the contradictions inherent to the construction (and presentation) of our identity and self-image as citizens of free and egalitarian liberal democracies: from evocations of free speech in defence of Islamophobes, while monitoring and censoring political speech under the auspices of countering Muslim ‘hate’ preachers and extremism, to evocations of gender rights in the West, particularly around banning the hijab and burka in the name of emancipation. As such paternalistic narratives developed and disproportionately targeted Muslim communities, they have distracted from failures to achieve gender equality on a structural level, as well as failing to acknowledge the growing anti-feminist backlash within Western liberal culture. At the same time, we have seen a number of far more illiberal, authoritarian and violent attacks on Muslims, from US President Donald Trump’s ‘Muslim travel ban’ 58

Mapping and mainstreaming Islamophobia

in January 2017 to Darren Osbourne’s attack on a crowd leaving the Muslim Welfare Centre in London, while shouting ‘I’m going to kill all Muslims’, on 19 June 2017, as well as reports of increased hate crimes against Muslims in the US, UK and France following terror attacks (Mark 2015; Al-Othman 2015; Friedersdorf 2015; LeMonde.fr 2015; Levin and Grisham 2015; Norton 2015; Lichtblau 2016; Potok 2016; SPLC 2017; Travis 2017), and a rise in anti-Muslim hate groups (SPLC 2017). To make sense of the contemporary landscape of Islamophobia, this chapter examines and explains the construction, functions and relationship between such diverse, seemingly contradictory and changing articulations of this term. Articulations that, we argue, at times, stand in contrast to definitions that are fixed or polarised between racism and religious prejudice, extreme and mainstream, state and non-state versions, or undifferentiated. This chapter will provide an overview of debates about Islamophobia and our analytical concepts of liberal and illiberal articulations of Islamophobia, which are the basis of our current research (Mondon and Winter 2017a, 2017b). Our aim with these concepts is to provide a more nuanced conceptual and analytical framework and tool to come to grips with the diversity, contradictions, transformation and increasingly slipperiness of Islamophobia(s), and racism itself, in order to combat it more effectively. Central to this chapter is our claim that these broad articulations are crucial to map the phenomenon of Islamophobia, but do not work in opposition: their borders are fuzzy, and that one cannot survive without the other giving it legitimacy. The first part of the chapter provides an overview of definitions of Islamophobia and debates in the field, and explains and justifies our use of the term Islamophobia over alternatives such as antiMuslim racism. The second and third sections develop the two articulations of Islamophobias we believe are essential to provide a comprehensive picture of the current state of racism towards anyone deemed Muslim.

Islamophobias: definitions and debates Various surveys have shown that ‘anti-Muslim biases’ (Taras 2013, pp. 426–431) have been prevalent across much of Europe and the United States. This includes everything from collective suspicion and securitisation and ‘Burka Bans’ in the mainstream to far-right campaigns and hate crimes. While there is relative consensus about the growing issue ‘Islamophobia’ or anti-Muslim hate, there is no consensus on the label or definition. The focus of research and debate has included a wide range of issues and originates from various perspectives and agendas. Research has focused on issues such as Islam and Muslim history, Muslim identities, media representations, multiculturalism and social cohesion, migration, citizenship, religion and culture, racialisation, secularism, gender, sexuality, nationalism, terrorism, extremism and securitisation. It is therefore not surprising that, as Chris Allen (2010) has argued, there is no clear and agreed upon definition. This section is thus devoted to explaining our own definitional standpoint as clearly as possible to provide the basis for the framework developed in the following part. In the wider public discourse, the most common term used is ‘Islamophobia’ and it has been widely viewed as an anti-religious prejudice, an attack on a set of ideas, tenets or a belief system. It is on this basis that some accusations of racism have been denied or displaced. There has been an effort though by scholars and activists to reject Islamophobia as a term and/or understand and define it as a form of racism to address its full character, targets and effects, as well as mitigate against such a defence or displacement. Halliday (1999) and others have argued that the preferred term should be ‘anti-Muslim hate’ or ‘anti-Muslim racism, as hate and/or racism is more accurate than fear (or phobia) and it is directed against a people, rather than a religion. Nasar Meer and 59

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Tariq Modood (2009, p. 338) do not reject the term, but argue that Islamophobia needs to be seen in relation to/as a form of racism. For Pnina Werbner, Whatever the case, the effects of securitisation and the attacks on Islamic symbols are racist, in the sense that they license the actions and discourses of individuals and groups who promote more offensive racist imaginaries. (Werbner 2013, p. 455) In the Runnymede Trust’s 2013 report The New Muslims, Claire Alexander (2013, p. 5) observes that ‘as the “colour line” was for the early 20th century, “The Muslim Question” has become the defining issue of our times.’ Alexander noted that: Since this period the race equality and religious equality agendas have become increasingly separate, and academic research in these areas has also become distinct . . . it is now seemingly possible to talk about religion without race and race without reference to religion. In the first instance, we risk separating out Muslims from a broader struggle for equality, and in the second we run the risk of subsuming or erasing the differences between experiences, priorities, groups and subjectivities for a one-size-fits-all definition of racism. (Alexander 2013, p. 6) In addition to this article highlighting diverse articulations of Islamophobia and constructing a more complex, nuanced and inclusive definition of Islamophobia, this argument by Alexander highlights the need for a more complex, nuanced and inclusive definition of racism, where Islamophobia fits in. In its 1997 report Islamophobia: a challenge for us all, the Runnymede Trust defined Islamophobia as ‘unfounded hostility towards Islam’. It identifies eight characteristics, including that Islam is seen as: a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change; lacking values in common with other cultures; as inferior to the West; as barbaric, irrational, primitive, and sexist; as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism (Runnymede Trust 1997). In their their 2017 follow-up report, Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for Us All, they assert that ‘Islamophobia is anti-Muslim racism’, basing their definition on the UN definition of racism and focusing on social, cultural, political and economic inequalities and harms (Runnymede Trust 2017).1 The debate between Islamophobia being about religion or race is not solely about what Islam or Muslims are, but what one wants to say about them, how they do it, its effects and how to challenge it. Religion does provide a convenient cover for those wishing to argue that they are attacking a belief and not people, and in a so-called ‘post-race’ context where racism is allegedly unacceptable, wriggle out of or deflect such charges. As Alexander pointed out in the 2013 report: . . . the term ‘Muslim’ is too often a codeword for a series of pathologies. If we think of dominant representations, they appear in three main categories: gender (the hijab/forced marriage/ honour killings triad), gangs and grooming, and terrorists/extremists. . . . [A]ll provide grist to the mill of the born-again racism without-race popular with both the EDL and the so-called liberal left because, apparently, it’s not racist to be anti-Muslim. (Alexander 2013, p. 6) Defining and seeing Islamophobia only or primarily through the prism of religion not only ignores these issues, processes and effects, but is particularly problematic (or functional) in 60

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so-called secular societies such as France, Britain and to a lesser extent in the United States, where criticism of religion is considered a healthy and necessary practice to allow for freedom of thought and expression. We see this most acutely with the so-called ‘New Atheist’ movement including noted free speech liberal Bill Maher, as well as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, who have all targeted Islam. This is even the case when the identification and discourse about Islam as a ‘religion’ slips into ‘culture’, as highlighted by the 1997 Runnymede Trust definition, although the latter brings us closer to a form of racism. In this context, the Islamophobe is often praised for breaking taboos in the name of freedom of speech and secularism. This is particularly the case regarding Islam as it is often considered to take ‘a conservative line’ on issues such as gender, sexuality and equality in general, which have come to symbolise liberal causes and liberalism in the post-1960s West. As highlighted by David Theo Goldberg (2006, p. 345), ‘Islam is taken in the dominant European imaginary to represent a collection of lacks: of freedom; of a disposition of scientific inquiry; of civility and manners; of love of life; of human worth; of equal respect for women and gay people.’ For Sayyid (2010, p. 1), its detractors perceive Islamophobia as simply a fig leaf behind which ‘backward’ social practices and totalitarian political ambitions are covered up and afforded bogus exemption from legitimate criticism and challenge’. In this chapter, we do not take the term ‘Islamophobia’ to be solely about religion (or fear, beyond a psychoanalytic reading in which underlying fear is an element), accepting the racism/racialisation thesis, but we do not reject it in favour of the term anti-Muslim racism. We use the term Islamophobia both as the most widely used term and to accommodate different forms of hate that include those focused on different aspects, such as those claiming to be referring to the religion or ‘ideas’ as opposed to people or ‘race’. These arguments and analyses (in themselves and in relation to one another) demonstrate the diverse articulations of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate. Just as Alexander highlights the need for a more complex, nuanced and inclusive definition of racism, where Islamophobia fits in, we call for a more complex, nuanced and inclusive definition of Islamophobia where racism, and its avoidance or concealment can be acknowledged and accounted for as a particular discourse. This is one of the reasons that we use the term ‘articulations’ and identify different ones.

Understanding Islamophobias as articulations Key to our framework is the understanding of Islamophobia as articulations rather than self-contained categories. Through the different modes of articulation outlined in the following section, the signifiers ‘Muslim’ and ‘Islam’ are constructed in different manners, but ultimately, they represent an Other, often described along racist lines in the current hegemonic discourse in much of the West. Yet, we argue, it is only through the dual offer of what we define as illiberal and liberal Islamophobias that this racist discourse can become naturalised and common sense, since it allows for those espousing the liberal position to justify their racist discourse by opposing it to the illiberal articulation, even though both are part of the same exclusionary paradigm. While it remains conceptual, contingent and may be contested, the distinction we make between the illiberal and liberal is important to accommodate different articulations and acknowledge the construction of an opposition by those espousing the liberal version for functional and strategic reasons: to displace racism and appear more mainstream. We thus see Islamophobia as a construct, and the Muslim signifier as one which does not come from the individual Muslim in a subjective manner. Instead, it is defined by the onlooker in a position of power and imposed onto people through various types of generalisation, misperception and stigmatisation. Such constructions can be articulated through 61

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different types of discourses, from the more traditional forms of biological racism in unreconstructed far-right and white supremacist circles, to more ‘evolved’ forms of racism based on culture and even progressive tropes. In the following sections, we construct a framework to account for what we consider the two most prominent articulations of current Islamophobic discourse to provide a more flexible and comprehensive way to delineate Islamophobias and thus address them and where they intersect more precisely. These are, as stated, illiberal Islamophobia and liberal Islamophobia.

Illiberal Islamophobia Illiberal Islamophobia is ‘illiberal’ inasmuch as it is not only rejected by the liberal norm, but denounced as unacceptable and alien to our post-racial societies (Lentin and Titley 2011), thus allowing the legitimisation of other, more insidious and less racialised forms. Our distinction between the liberal and illiberal articulations here is not so much based on political and ideology theory, but rather on the perceived quality of each concept in the mainstream discourse. ‘Liberal’ thus refers to the prevalent obedience to the constitution and the rule of law particularly regarding equal treatment of citizens, and a loyalty to the deliberation processes central to liberal democracy particularly in the form of elections. Illiberal in our case refers to the treatment of certain groups, particularly based on ethnic and/or cultural generalised traits, and the possibility (discursive or otherwise) to circumvent the rule of law, the constitution and even electoral results should a threat be considered serious enough (for more detail, see Mondon and Winter 2017a). Illiberal Islamophobia commonly emerges from exclusivist ideologies, discourses and identities associated with easily recognisable forms of racisms, typically originating on the far-right and within ultra-conservative circles. This type of Islamophobia is closest to traditional racism and often presents Islam as monolithic and innately threatening and inferior (in terms of ‘race’ if not also culture). It is essentialist and total as it includes all Muslims without making distinctions in terms of the specific belief, background ideology, behaviour or activity of individuals or sub-groups. Muslimness becomes an immutable characteristic (akin to biology): Muslims are innately Muslims and there is no loyalty test possible. Illiberal Islamophobia can be witnessed in attacks, whether discursive or physical, against Muslims and mosques, but also in calls for repatriation or even genocide. However, illiberal Islamophobia is not synonymous to traditional, biological forms of racism, and is not restricted to white supremacist circles. While it is indeed most clearly related to traditional right-wing race hate, its most pervasive and insidious occurrences are represented by what Etienne Balibar (1997), among others (Taguieff 1994; Barker 1982), has termed the ‘new racism’, which moves from biological to cultural difference and from hierarchy of races to incompatibility of ‘cultures’. This type of discourse remains very much on the margin of politics because of its illiberal quality, insofar as it advocates for different rights to different people and cultures, but it occupies a space between the most reviled forms of racism based on biology and its more insidious occurrences based on culture. This is made possible by several factors specific to Islam and Muslims, most notably the status of Islam as a religion, as well as the legacy of colonial discourses in France and Britain, migration, and essentialised constructions of cultural difference. In terms of the latter, this can take the form of Orientalist colonial cultural essentialism and hierarchies or a pseudo progressive anthropological one. This opens the door to liberal Islamophobia by concealing its racism behind ‘culture’. An example would be to represent a homogenous Muslim culture as one that is indiscriminately and innately backwards and illiberal towards women, homosexuality, free speech and democracy. 62

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Obviously, as with other ideological elements, the borders between what is acceptable or not, what is mainstream or extreme, are fuzzy and in constant evolution, which has been both useful and damaging for those parties and movements trying to walk the tightrope. The illiberal articulation of Islamophobia has two elements central to our argument. The first is that it can be defined as a discourse falling outside of the liberal norm because of its calls for discriminatory practices based on culture, ethnicity and or/religion, but at the same time stirring clear from the crudest forms of racism. The second element relates to the positioning of the contingent line drawn between the mainstream and the extreme: what is acceptable and what is not. We argue that it is the construction and containment of a clearly delineated type of Islamophobia which falls outside of the liberal, mainstream ideal, which make it possible for subtler forms of Islamophobia to enter the mainstream discourse due their apparent allegiance to liberal democratic rules.

Liberal Islamophobia While illiberal Islamophobia is usually easily recognised and widely denounced in mainstream discourse, we argue that a more mainstream trend has taken hold of public discourse and become increasingly normalised. While the liberal articulation of Islamophobia can be contrasted with the illiberal one by its proclaimed allegiance to fantasised liberal and democratic principles, both share a basic structure based on a racialised understanding of culture. However, the liberal articulation takes its cultural understanding of racism a step further by explicitly distancing itself from, and even repudiating, openly traditional racism and hate, and pretends to focus only on ‘religion’, ‘culture’ and/or values, in relation to democratic rights and tolerance as values inherent to Western societies, most notably free speech, women’s rights and LGBT rights. Therefore, contrary to illiberal and more extreme forms of Islamophobia, liberal Islamophobia is anchored in a pseudo-progressive narrative in the defence of the rule of law based on liberal equality, freedom and rights (e.g. liberal versions of freedom of speech, gender and sexual equality). To gain legitimacy, it is thus crucial that liberal Islamophobia goes beyond its attacks on Muslims, and appears to challenge traditional far-right and ultra-conservative discourses and ideologies. In its self-proclaimed yet limited opposition to the reviled ‘racists’, ‘sexists’ and ‘fundamentalists’ of all kinds, it enables far greater mainstream and even progressive acceptance. Before going any further, it is important to note that, by stating that mainstream articulations of Islamophobia are couched in progressive terms and the defence of certain rights, does not mean that any criticism directed at discriminatory practices is necessarily Islamophobic. While oppression can certainly be expressed through particular versions and implementations of Islam, what this chapter describes as liberal Islamophobia is the creation of a loosely defined Muslim culture and community inherently and homogeneously opposed to some of the core values espoused in a mythical essentialised culturally homogeneous, superior and enlightened West. In this vision, the progress achieved by the West is taken uncritically and portrayed as a natural state of things ignoring that democracy, human rights, free speech, gender and sexual equality and rights remain precarious, unequally distributed and unfulfilled. Therefore, in our framework, two aspects make the liberal articulation of Islamophobia distinct, not from conservative, but extreme and illiberal forms: •

It allows for limited distinctions between ‘good’ (redeemable) and ‘bad’ Muslims subject to a loyalty test, that is through (demands for) explicit expressions of opposition and apologies from ‘moderate’ Muslims, even though the line to satisfy such demands is arbitrary, and always moving out of reach. 63

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•

It emphasises the apparent inclusion of other ethnic and religious groups typically hated by the far-right and traditional racists. Such groups provide a veneer of tolerance and progressivism as their victimisation is acknowledged, albeit diverted onto a particular scapegoat: the racialised and stigmatised group can join if ‘They’ decide to integrate through hate.

Contrary to illiberal forms of Islamophobia taking their ideological impulse from anti-egalitarian and authoritarian movements, liberal islamophobia acts as a decoy to provide ‘us’ with a righteous sense of ourselves as the defenders of a more progressive vision of the world, and displaces these tensions, failures and inadequacies onto Islam as solely responsible for our problems. However, it is crucial to reiterate that the borders between illiberal and liberal islamophobias are fuzzy, and that such cover against accusations of racism present in the liberal articulation are often used by conservatives and even those usually associated with the more illiberal articulation as well. We argued elsewhere that a number of elements of discourse have been key to justify this mainstreaming of Islamophobia. In this chapter, we would like to outline two briefly to highlight how the liberal articulation has been constructed and allowed Islamophobia to become increasingly mainstream: freedom of speech and gender rights (Mondon and Winter 2017a, 2017b). They are taken up not only by the far-right, but the state and liberal media which normalise and mainstream them. Critiques of Islam and Muslims based on illiberalism, particularly in terms of free speech, found their contemporary roots in the wake of the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses (Rushdie 2008; Appignanesi and Maitland 1989). Such critiques gained further traction after the cartoons affair in 2005, when Danish newspaper published twelve drawings of the Prophet Mohammed, claiming that the aim of the cartoons’ publication was to test ‘the boundaries of censorship in a time of war’ (Battaglia 2006, p. 29; see also Klausen 2009). For Ferruh Yilmaz, Jyllands-Posten was extremely successful in (a) creating an intense debate that can easily be described as a ‘moral panic’ about Islam’s compatibility with ‘Western’ values, (b) making freedom of speech the central question in the debate, and (c) mobilising sides on the basis of Muslim and Western ‘identities,’ regardless of what their own identifications and arguments are otherwise. (Yilmaz 2011, p. 11) The cartoons affair therefore allowed right-wing voices to rework their neo-racist argument into part of the fuzzy enlightenment project: the new crusades would be between innately reactionary Muslims and indiscriminately progressive Western societies. This line of argument was extremely successful, creating deep divisions within and throughout the left as intellectuals and activists wrongly felt forced to choose between secularism and racism: to defend universalism and secularism the essentialisation and exclusion of part of the population was deemed necessary (see Mondon and Winter 2017b). The attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 mainstreamed this argument further. As noted elsewhere, the magazine became a flagbearer for such a civilisational project: ‘Je Suis Charlie’ was the assertion that the West and France in particular identified with the magazine as its symbol or proxy for freedom of speech, and stood together in solidarity with them for it and the attack on it/them/us. (Mondon and Winter 2017b, p. 32) In the US, with free speech enshrined in the constitution and the national psyche, we have seen liberal comedian and TV host Bill Maher, even prior to the attack on Charlie Hebdo, argue that 64

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Islam is the ‘mother lode of bad ideas’ (Cohen 2017) and ‘Islam is the only religion that acts like the mafia that will fucking kill you if you say the wrong thing’ (Jalabi 2014). Defending himself against charges of Islamophobia, Maher argued ‘[w]e are not bigoted people. On the contrary! We’re trying to stand up for the principles of liberalism!’ (Jalabi 2014). He argued: To count yourself as a liberal, you have to stand up for liberal principles: Free speech. Separation of church and state. Freedom to practice any religion or no religion without the threat of violence. Respect for minorities, including homosexuals. Equality for women. (Maher 2014) Following the 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo, the group Stop Islamization of America and Jihad Watch hosted a ‘Prophet Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest’ in Texas. According to SIA leader Pamela Geller: ‘We decided to have a cartoon contest to show we would not kowtow to violent intimidation and allow the freedom of speech to be overwhelmed by thugs and bullies.’ During the event, two gunman committed a drive-by shooting, hitting a security guard, which Geller called a ‘war on free speech’ (Bever 2015). Similarly, the issue of gender became increasingly prominent following 9/11 with the invasion of Afghanistan justified party by coalition partners in terms of emancipating women from the Taliban (Khiabany and Williamson 2011). The criticism or attack on Muslims using women’s rights (or the expression of what some, such as Sara Farris, have termed ‘femonationalism’) has spread and gained increased currency more recently, most notably with calls to ban, and actual bans on, different Muslim women’s head coverings, as well as the ‘burkini’, in France and the UK (see Zempi and Chakraborti 2014; Delphy 2015; Massoumi 2015; Rashid 2016; Farris 2012, 2017; Mondon and Winter 2017a). In 2017, the UK educational authority Ofsted even sought to interview and investigate young girls wearing head covering as a ‘safeguarding’ issue (BBC News 2017). This gendered liberal islamophobia has also focused on issues that are not-Muslim specific, such as forced marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM). In the US, Bill Maher and Robert Spencer, founder of the neo-conservative SIA and Jihad Watch, have attempted to champion women’s rights. Spencer is the author of The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam, while Jihad Watch ‘seeks to bring public attention to: The plight of women under Sharia provisions . . .’ (Jihad Watch 2016). This, like free speech, has allowed movements traditionally thought of as extreme, such as SIA and Jihad Watch, as well as the EDL and Pegida, to move closer to the centre ground and mainstream. In 2016, Pegida and other groups have attempted to exploit the New Year’s Eve sexual assaults in Cologne which were blamed on Muslim refugees. Anne-Marie Waters of Pegida has argued that Europe is experiencing a ‘rape epidemic’ due to Muslim migration and refugees (Waters 2015). Many anti-Muslim activists and commentators, such as Pegida, EDL, BNP and Nigel Farage, have referred to Sweden as the ‘rape capital’ of Europe due to Muslim migration (Lusher 2017). Far right anti-Muslim activists have also focused on and campaigned around cases in Rotherham and Rochdale, UK, where gangs of Asian-Muslim men were accused of grooming young girls for sexual exploitation (Smith 2013; Tell Mama 2014). These are all articulated as defences of women against sexual exploitation, assault and violence, at the hands of Muslims.

Blurry lines, contradictions and functionality While there are many ways to demonstrate the potency of Islamophobia in our society, this chapter argues that the division between liberal and illiberal articulations can help us shed more light as to the ways in which it travels and has been mainstreamed in different political and 65

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cultural contexts. However, this division does not mean that the concepts are exclusive. In fact, they are linked by the target and at the borders. The acceptance of liberal Islamophobia within the mainstream rests on that of illiberal Islamophobia being both easily identified, contrasted and denounced. Yet the mask slips easily and often. This is not only because of the blurred or slippery relationship between the two concepts based on a shared antagonism, target and structure, but also because both are responses or backlashes to the impact of the liberal social movements of the 1960s to 1980s: feminism, anti-colonialism, LGBT rights and anti-racism despite liberals claiming to champion some of these. While it is widely accepted that those espousing Illiberal Islamophobic discourses stand strongly against these and want the clock turned back, liberal Islamophobia has allowed for a more mainstream backlash route. Since the 1990s, a counter-hegemonic discourse has gained ground, positing somewhat paradoxically that the demand for ‘real’ equality by some minorities may pose a risk to Western culture, despite its universal claims. Therefore, liberal Islamophobia, with its discourse based in fantasised liberal rights and universalism, is in fact anchored in racist discourse as it rests upon the assumption of an innate superiority of ‘our’ way of life, while creating an essentialised ‘other’ as a threat. It is also never long before the racist illiberal hate peeks out through or sheds the liberal veneer, for their target was always the same: Muslims. While this process started in the 1980s, the liberal version recently found its argument legitimised in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. It was following the November 2015 Paris attacks that the conversation turned from liberalism, freedom and rights back to security and explicit fear and hate, calls for bans on Muslims and Syrian refugees and a spike in hate crimes against Muslims. In the UK, while we see the weaponisation of free speech against Muslims post-Charlie Hebdo, the state’s Prevent legislation, designed to identity and prevent possible and potential radicalisation, extremism and terrorism, has been criticised for subjecting Muslim speech to extra scrutiny and illiberal censorship. In terms of gender, what becomes clear is that, as developed elsewhere, such defences of women’s rights are based on traditional reactionary principles: calls to ban the hijab for example present themselves as attempts to emancipate women from an oppressive patriarchal culture, but really only target and punish women with charges and penalties by demonising a particular garment, without ever considering the agency of the bearer. Muslim women are thus given a choice: remove the items or remove yourself from the public sphere and associated rights and resources (e.g. employment, social services and education) and return to the private sphere. (Mondon and Winter 2017a) In the Cologne, Swedish and Rotherham and Rochdale, as well as wider European cases, the female victims being defended and protected are not Muslim, but white-European. This is because these are merely updated expressions of traditional racist-nationalist patriarchal discourses in which white men appoint themselves (or are appointed) protectors of white women against men from different cultures and races seen to pose a sexual threat not only to the women, but white male masculinity and the nation, which is what the far-right trades in. Furthermore, despite the claim that it is women’s interests and emancipation that are being defended and protected, research has shown that it is Muslim women, most notably those wearing the very head coverings that get so much attention in these liberal discourses, who are on the receiving end of illiberal hate crimes and violence (Zempi and Chakraborti 2014; Perry 2014), as well as securitisation (Rashid 2016). According to data compiled by Tell Mama in the UK, in the week following the November 2015 Paris attacks, hate crimes against Muslims increased more than 300% to 115 and most victims were Muslim girls and women ‘in traditional Islamic dress’ 66

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(Mogul 2015). This also points to the rise in illiberal Islamophobia that would run parallel and, as this illustrates, intersect, with the liberal version. This emergence of illiberal Islamophobic hate out from beyond the acceptable liberal articulation post-Charlie Hebdo, and the former taking over the latter, could be seen in the United States with Trump’s campaign threat and later attempt to ban Muslims from entering the country and a rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes and hate groups in 2015 and 2016 (Levin and Grisham 2015; Norton 2015; Lichtblau 2016; Potok 2016; SPLC 2017), many of whom supported his candidacy (SPLC 2016a; Neiwert and Posner 2016; Hafner 2016). In response to the rise in illiberalism during the campaign, Salon’s Jeffrey Tayler (2015) called for people to: ‘Follow Bill Maher’s lead, not Donald Trump’s: There’s a way to critique ideology behind religion without resorting to hate.’ What Tayler failed to recognise was that Maher helped set the stage for acceptance of Trump’s Islamophobia in mainstream, and that these two articulations were converging. The situation seemed to get worse when Trump was elected, with the SPLC reporting a spike in hate crimes against Muslims and other groups in the month following the election (SPLC 2016b), and then when he took office. A week after being inaugurated on 20 January, Trump issued his executive order Protection of the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States. The order banned Muslims from seven countries, including refugees from Syria, from entering the United States for 90 days and suspending the Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days (Merica 2017). In response to this, fellow ‘new atheist’ Sam Harris appeared on Bill Maher’s Real Time on 3 February and both opposed it, in the latter’s words, ‘because we are liberals’. Harris argued that a blanket ban was counter-productive because ‘we’ are ‘desperate for moderate Muslims in society’ as ‘only secular, liberal and former Muslims, frankly, can police this for us’ (Harris 2017). Harris, like Tayler, was trying to differentiate between two articulations of Islamophobia and failed to see the Islamophobic construction of the good vs bad Muslim underpinning his argument or the fact that, along with Maher, he had a role in mainstreaming the Islamophobia that Trump mobilised. Harris may have a sense that the two articulations are converging, which may lie behind his attempt to police the boundary between them so explicitly at this point in time. This convergence became clear when Maher hosted Breitbart editor, alt-right figurehead and Trump supporter Milo Yiannopoulos on Real Time on 17 February, and despite different opinions on Trump, the two bonded over their shared Islamophobia. Yiannopoulos often articulated his view, like Maher, in terms of free speech and ‘gay’ rights, but not gender or progressive liberalism, which he despised, naming one speech ‘Feminism and Islam, The Unholy Alliance’. In the interview, Yiannopoulos complimented Maher by saying ‘You’re sound on Islam, unlike most people on your show’, and Maher responded ‘Yes, that’s true’ (Obeidallah 2017).

Conclusion This chapter has attempted to contribute to the debates on the understanding and definition of Islamophobia by providing an overview of our concepts of liberal and illiberal Islamophobias in the context of existing literature and political developments. We argued that these concepts are essential to respond to more narrow, contingent definitions and polarised debates about how to define Islamophobia (e.g. racist vs anti-religious, extreme vs mainstream and state vs non-state expressions), capture the diverse, changing, seemingly contradictory and slippery articulations of Islamophobia and provide a framework for mapping and analysing these as they appear and transform. We have used examples from France, the US and UK to show how such articulations operate in and apply to different contexts, which also point to the spread of Islamophobia in recent years. Liberal and illiberal Islamophobia are not, as pointed out, mutually exclusive, as 67

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the unacceptability of illiberal anti-Muslim hate or racism provides a negative comparison that allows liberal articulations to avoid criticism. This allows Islamophobia to gain mainstream traction in ways that traditional racism could not. At the same time, this allows for the normalisation of Islamophobia which legitimises and emboldens hate that can then manifest in illiberal, authoritarian and violence expressions.

Acknowledgement This chapter is based on and builds upon Mondon and Winter (2017a).

Note 1 The longer 2017 definition, building on the UN definition of racism, states: ‘Islamophobia is any distinction, exclusion, or restriction towards, or preference against, Muslims (or those perceived to be Muslims) that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.’

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Goldberg, D. T. 2006. Racial Europeanization. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29(2), 331–364. Hafner, J. 2016. Former Ku Klux Klan Leader Declares Support for Donald Trump. USA Today. 25 February. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/02/25/ david-duke-trump/80953384. Halliday, F. 1999. Islamophobia Reconsidered. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22(5), 892–902. Harris, S. 2017. Winning the War of Ideas: REAL TIME with Bill Maher. Sam Harris Blog. Retrieved from www.samharris.org/blog/item/winning-the-war-of-ideas. Ingulfsen, I. 2016. Why Aren’t European Feminists Arguing against the Anti-immigrant Right?. Open Democracy. 18 February. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www.opendemocracy.net/5050/ why-are-european-feminists-failing-to-strike-back-against-anti-immigrant-right. Jalabi, R. 2014. A History of the Bill Maher’s ‘Not Bigoted’ Remarks on Islam. The Guardian. 7 October. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/ oct/06/bill-maher-islam-ben-affleck. Jihad Watch. 2016. Why Jihad Watch? Retrieved from www.jihadwatch.org/why-jihad-watch. Khiabany, G. and Williamson, M. 2011. Muslim Women and Veiled Threats: From ‘Civilising Mission’ to ‘Clash of Civilisations’. In: Petley, J. and R. Richardson eds. Pointing the Finger: Islam and Muslims in the British Media. Oxford: One World. pp. 129–146. Klausen, J. 2009. The Cartoons That Shook the World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. LeMonde.fr. 2015. Les actes islamophobes et antisémites en nette progression au premier semestre en ‘rance’. Le Monde. 17 July. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from http://mobile.lemonde.fr/policejustice/article/2015/07/17/les-actes-islamophobes-et-antisemites-en-nette-progression-au-premiersemestre-en-france_4687414_1653578.html. Lentin, A. and Titley, G. 2011. The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age. London: Zed Books. Levin, B. and Grisham, K. 2016. Special Status Report Hate Crime in the United States: 20 State Compilation of Official Data. Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. San Bernadino, CA: California State University. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www.documentcloud.org/documents/3110202SPECIAL-STATUS-REPORT-v5-9-16-16.html. Lichtblau, E. 2016. Hate Crimes against American Muslims Most Since Post-9/11 Era. New York Times. 17 September. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/us/politics/hatecrimes-american-muslims-rise.html?_r=0. Lusher, A. 2017. Nigel Farage Echoes Donald Trump by Claiming Sweden is ‘Rape Capital’ of Europe. This is Why They’re Wrong. The Independent. 21 February. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-sweden-donald-trump-rape-capital-ofeurope-refugees-malmo-why-wrong-debunked-claim-a7591636.html. Maher, B. 2014. Maher Rips Liberals Over Islam: ‘If We’re Giving No Quarter To Intolerance, Shouldn’t We Start With Honor Killers?’. Real Clear Politics, 27 September. Retrieved from www. realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/09/27/maher_rips_liberals_over_islam_if_were_giving_no_quarter_ to_intolerance_shouldnt_we_start_with_honor_killers.html. Mark, M. 2015. Anti-Muslim Hate Crimes Have Spiked after Every Major Terrorist Attack: After Paris, Muslims Speak Out Against Islamophobia. International Business Times. 18 November. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www.ibtimes.com/anti-muslim-hate-crimes-have-spiked-after-every-majorterrorist-attack-after-paris-2190150. Massoumi, N. 2015. Muslim Women, Social Movements and the ‘War on Terror’. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Meer, N. and Modood, T. 2009. Refutations of Racism in the ‘Muslim Question’. Patterns of Prejudice, 43(3–4), 332–351. Merica, D. 2017. Trump Signs Executive Order to Keep Out ‘Radical Islamic Terrorists’. CNN. 30 January. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/27/politics/ trump-plans-to-sign-executive-action-on-refugees-extreme-vetting. Mogul, P. 2015. Paris Attacks: Hate Crimes against British Muslims Soar by 300% in One Week. IB Times. 23 November. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www.ibtimes.co.uk/ paris-attacks-hate-crimes-against-british-muslims-soar-by-300-one-week-1530048. Mondon, A. and Winter, A. 2017a. Articulations of Islamophobia: From the Extreme to the Mainstream? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(13), 2151–2179. Mondon, A. and Winter, A. 2017b. Charlie Hebdo, Republican Secularism and Islamophobia. In: Titley, G., Freedman, D., Khiabany, G. and Mondon, A. eds. After Charlie Hebdo: Terror, Racism and Free Speech. London: Zed Books. 69

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Neiwert, D. and Posner, S. 2016. Meet the Horde of Neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and other Extremist Leaders Endorsing Donald Trump. Mother Jones. 21 September. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www.mother jones.com/politics/2016/09/trump-supporters-neo-nazis-white-nationalists-kkk-militias-racism-hate. Norton, B. 2015. Anti-Muslim Hate Crimes Have Tripled in the US since the Paris Attacks. Salon. 18 December. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www.salon.com/2015/12/18/ anti_muslim_hate_crimes_have_tripled_in_the_u_since_the_paris_attacks. Obeidallah, D. 2017. Bill Maher’s Shameful Mainstreaming of Yiannopoulos’ Hate. CNN. 20 February. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from http://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/18/opinions/ mahers-shameful-mainstreaming-of-yiannopoulos. Perry, B. 2014. Gendered Islamophobia: Hate Crime against Muslim Women. Journal of Race, Nation and Culture, 20(1), 76–77. Potok, M. 2016. Anti-Muslim Hate Crimes Surged Last Year Fueled Hateful Campaign. SPLC. 14 November. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/11/14/ anti-muslim-hate-crimes-surged-last-year-fueled-hateful-campaign. Rashid, N. 2016. Veiled Threats: Representing the Muslim Woman in Public Policy Discourses. Bristol: Policy Press. Runnymede Trust. 1997. Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All. London: Runnymede Trust. Runnymede Trust. 2017. Islamophobia: Still A Challenge for Us All. London: Runnymede Trust. Rushdie, S. 2008. The Satanic Verses. London: Random House. Sayyid, S. 2010. Thinking through Islamophobia. In: Sayyid, S. and A. Vakil eds. Thinking Through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives. London: C. Hurst and Co. pp. 1–5. Smith, M. 2013. ‘English Defence League Exploiting Sex-Grooming Fears, Says Report’. The Guardian. 13 March. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/mar/13/ english-defence-league-sex-grooming. SPLC. 2016a. Alternative Right. SPLC. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www.splcenter.org/ fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/alternative-right. SPLC. 2016b. Update: 1,094 Bias-Related Incidents in the Month Following the Election. SPLC. 16 December. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/12/16/ update-1094-bias-related-incidents-month-following-election. SPLC. 2017. Hate Groups Increase for Second Consecutive Year as Trump Electrifies Radical Right. Intelligence Report: The Year in Hate and Extremism. SPLC. 15 February. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www.splcenter.org/news/2017/02/15/hate-groups-increase-secondconsecutive-year-trump-electrifies-radical-right. Taguieff, P.-A. 1994. Sur la Nouvelle droite: jalons d’une analyse critique. Paris: Descartes et Cie. Taras, R. 2013. ‘Islamophobia Never Stands Still’: Race, Religion, and Culture. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(3), 417–433. Tayler, J. 2015. ‘Follow Bill Maher’s lead, not Donald Trump: There’s a way to critique ideology behind religion without resorting to hate’. Salon, 13 December. Retrieved from www.salon.com/2015/12/13/ follow_bill_mahers_lead_not_donald_trump_theres_a_way_to_critique_ideology_behind_religion_ without_resorting_to_hate/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow. Tell Mama. 2014. Rotherham, Hate, and the Far Right Online. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www. tellmamauk.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Rotherham.pdf. Travis, A. 2017. Anti-Muslim Hate Crime Surges after Manchester and London Bridge. The Guardian. 20 June. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/20/ anti-muslim-hate-surges-after-manchester-and-london-bridge-attacks. Waters, A.-M. 2015. Europe’s Rape Epidemic: Western Women Will Be Sacrificed At The Altar of Mass Migration. Breitbart. 6 October. Retrieved 12 December 2017 from www.breitbart.com/ london/2015/10/06/europes-rape-epidemic-western-women-will-be-sacrificed-at-the-alter-ofmass-migration. Werbner, P. 2013. Folk Devils and Racist Imaginaries in a Global Prism: Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism in the Twenty-First Century. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(3), 450–467. Yilmaz, F. 2011. The Politics of the Danish Cartoon Affair: Hegemonic Intervention by the Extreme Right. Communication Studies, 62(1), 5–22. Zempi I. and Chakraborti, N. 2014. Islamophobia, Victimisation and the Veil. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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6 The psychology of hate crime offenders who target Muslims Who could be a hate crime offender? Jane Prince

Introduction On 23 May 2017, the day after a suicide bomber exploded a bomb at the Manchester Arena, UK, killing 22 people, mainly young girls, Donald Trump, president of the USA, described the perpetrator as ‘sad’ and a ‘loser’. In an amazing demonstration of serendipity, he identified appropriate terms to describe at least some of the people who commit hate crimes; the research evidence suggests that feelings of isolation and marginalisation are, among other factors, characteristic of hate crime offenders. However, this does not present a complete profile of hate crime offenders; there is also evidence that group membership can be a significant factor in hate crime offending and that membership of a group can valorise individuals to aggressive acts even to the point of putting their own futures at risk. In this chapter, we will consider research exploring the characteristics of hate crime offenders and discuss how this knowledge could be used to reduce the incidence of Islamophobic hate crime. The essence of hate crime is that it is enacted because of the victim’s identity as a member of a particular group rather than any individual qualities or characteristics s/he may possess. Thus, research and theoretical frameworks which encompass the influence of group membership must be of relevance. The notion of propensity to enact hate crimes as being related to personality characteristics and the possibility of links to pathological psychological states will also be discussed. We will also consider the role of personal attitudes and address the issue of discrepancies between expressed attitudes and actual behaviours as problematic in the prediction of who will commit hate offences. The difficulties of addressing and eliminating the causes of Islamophobic hate crime without risking further polarising individuals and broader groups will be considered.

Influences of salient group identity Levin and McDevitt (1993) identified bigotry as the underpinning characteristic of all hate crime perpetrators. They also identified four sub-categories of hate offenders: thrill seekers, defensive offenders, retaliatory offenders and mission offenders. Of these the most enduring is that category they termed ‘mission offenders’. This group involves perpetrators who develop a career of bigotry with a total commitment to hate, which becomes a life focus. The aim of 71

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this type of perpetrator is ridding the world of an evil, a generalised menace, with this menace being unconnected to any specific effect personally experienced by him. Thus the committing of hate crimes by a member of this group is not directly connected to any personal life experience; rather, it is connected to a world view drawn from a restricted exposure to information drawn from specific sources. Explanations for this limited use of source information for building the sense of mission derives from social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1979). The focus within social identity theory (SIT) is on the group membership conferring salient aspects of identity on the individual to the extent that these aspects dominate how the person sees himself/herself as being. In effect belonging to a particular group facilitates the identification of others as being non members, being the ‘other’ or the ‘out-group’; this process of what Tajfel and Turner called social categorisation is associated with the cognitive change of the way in which the out-group is valued in comparison with the group of which a person is a member – having once defined a person (or group) as not being ‘one of us’ that group can legitimately be denigrated and criticised. Not only that, the assignation of other people into particular groups allows an individual to make broad sweeping attributions about their qualities, their worth, their abilities and personal characteristics. This is cognitively less demanding than seeing them as individuals and such stereotyping or categorisation allows a faster process of decision making in relation to them. Categories tell us how we should and should not behave; we use the norms we have developed in relation to category membership to make decisions about actions. Thus for the mission offender described above it is at this time that they can define group norms (derogatory ones for the out-group, heroic ones for the in-group). Tajfel and Turner argue that as we identify with a particular group we assume the characteristics and qualities of that group and value these. The individual then seeks information from sources broadly supportive of that group in order to maintain self-esteem. At this point a person can enter what Tajfel and Turner call stage three of the group identity process whereby the individual engages in social comparison through which the characteristics, qualities and actions of the in-group are favourably compared with those of out-groups. This comparison includes consideration of group qualities (those positive things the group members have in common), group resources and group rewards. This is a critical part of SIT as once groups see themselves as different, members inevitably develop out-group hostility either because there is competition for resources or as a result of competing identities. While a person may belong to many different groups these cannot be mutually conflicting. If they are conflicting, the individual experiences dissonance and moves away from one group. The process of out-group derogation legitimises the victimisation of others.

Motivations for hate crime offending McDevitt, Levin and Bennett (2002) argue that perpetrators of mission hate crimes make hate a career rather than a hobby; they may operate within organised groups such as the English Defence League, Britain First, National Action or Scottish Dawn or act alone but the focus is always on the need to ‘liberate’ society from the objects of hate. The other typologies of hate crime they identified allow for a more transient disposition to offend; although all typologies are underpinned by bigotry, the period of time during which perpetrators enact their bigoted attitudes into actual offences tend to be more short-lived. McDevitt, Levin and Bennett (2002) identified three further causes of hate crime. Thrillseeking hate crimes (largely confined to younger males) are associated with group dynamics and 72

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thrill seeking, and tend almost universally to be carried out by groups or by individuals spurred on by the presence of other group members. Defensive hate crimes (committed by those who see their communities as under threat) are responses to perceived risks emanating from the victim’s group. Retaliatory hate crimes take place when people aggress against a minority group member because another minority member has offended against their group. It is important to note the notion of ‘thrill seeking’ as a category has been challenged by Chakraborti and Garland (2009), who suggest that, far from seeking thrills, the young men who commit hate crimes in groups are typically from marginalised groups who are themselves the recipients of negative attitudes and hostility form the dominant groups in society. An example of thrill-seeking offending is where a group of young men pull the headscarf from a Muslim woman or launch into a torrent of abuse suggesting a visibly Muslim individual should ‘go home’. Defensive hate crimes might take the form of direct discrimination against the target group such as refusing to allow them access to certain resources (for example, bullying minority group children by refusing to allow them access to play or sport facilities). Hate crimes serve a dual purpose, that of causing harm to a member of a specific group but also working as a symbolic reminder to all members of that group or community that they are hated (Craig 2002). To an extent it is irrelevant whether a person fully commits as a member of that socially identifiable minority group, they still serve as visible symbols of that loathed group and of the risk in which members of that group are placed. This symbolic relationship also acts instrumentally in influencing patterns of actions of the victims group; the behaviour of group members may change in order to avoid placing themselves at risk. Members may avoid certain locations, avoid following certain dress codes or stop going out at certain times in order to avoid exposing themselves to the risk of harm. In this way hate crimes are very effective for the perpetrator in that they restrict behaviours of members of the victims group, extending far beyond the victim’s social circle. Craig (2002) also suggests that perpetrators’ friends and social groups are also affected in that they feel pressurised to behave in a hostile way when engaging with members of the victim’s social groups. In this way, further ideas about in-group and out-group appropriate behaviours are integrated into victim and aggressors’ self-schema (Weng 2004). The cycle of antagonism, hostility and hate is perpetuated. McDevitt et al. (2002) noted that a considerable proportion of hate crimes are enacted by groups rather than individuals (they argued the motives were primarily Thrill Seeking in such cases); they reported that 66% of the cases they reviewed were perpetrated by groups or by individuals who were accompanied by group members as onlookers.

De-individuation processes and hate crime It has been argued that the polarising of behaviour in large groups or crowds is a consequence of deindividuation (Zimbardo 1970; Reicher 2001), a process whereby membership of a physically present group leads to a loss of personal accountability and concern for social evaluation. Leader, Mullen and Abrams (2007) demonstrated that the level of violence shown in a crowd will increase in tandem with the size of the crowd increasing. However, deindividuation does not address the core of McDevitt et al.’s (2002) findings, that the membership of a hate group influences individual members’ behaviours towards those who are representative of the hated group. Deindividuation explains a greater propensity to be violent but not why the presence of others with a particular attitude should direct that violence – arguably deindividuation theories would suggest the development of a general increase in antisocial behaviour rather than a specific hate-focused behaviour should develop. Deindividuation Theory explains changes in behaviour as a consequence of the loss of a sense of identity, of self-awareness and of rational 73

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behaviour (Klein, Spears and Reicher 2007). The integration of negative attitudes to outgroups leading to hate crimes is explained through a development within deindividuation theory: emergent norm theory (Turner and Killian 1987).

Emergent norms and social representations Emergent norm theory (Turner and Killian 1987) proposes that as social behaviour is driven by norms it is the development of new norms in groups of people which should be explored in order to explain violent group behaviours. Specifically, Turner and Killian (1987) argued that in large groups individual norms are discarded and new norms emerge reflecting the predispositions of large parts of a crowd. In a music festival such as Latitude or Glastonbury, where norms of friendship and sharing are emphasised, random acts of aggression will be stopped immediately; in a different kind of crowd, acts of aggression can take on a unifying function. Suggestions for action will be normalised if they converge with the predispositions of the crowd. If many people in the crowd are angry or looking for excitement the individuals who show aggression are more likely to impact on the behaviour of others and the crowd develops consensus as to what is acceptable and what is wrong. So, group members start to feel pressure to conform to an implicit norm, the process of conforming taking place either through action or through approval signalling. Not all people will take action, some will be curious spectators and others may be concerned about events although not sure what to do to express those concerns (McDevitt et al. 2002). Nonetheless the lack of any challenge reinforces the view of the group that the aggressive behaviours are acceptable and approved. The focus on actions does not mean that attitudes and social representations are unimportant in influencing hate-based offending. The process of interacting with others leads to the development of societally shared beliefs and attitudes, called social representations (Moscovici 1988); inevitably different representations of the same object may be held by different sections of society or even by the same individual at different moments in time. The social representation includes not only the orientation of an attitude (for example, positive or negative) but also the reason for holding the attitude. For example, Rafiq, Jobanuptra and Muncer (2006) researched attitudes of British students to the Iraq war; while both Muslim and Christian students held negative attitudes to the war and to the reasons for its initiation, they had differing overall representations of the war with Christian students far likely to have a broad ‘war on terror’ orientation within their social representation of the war than did the Muslim students. Another example is attitudes to the wearing of the religious symbols in contemporary France; this is banned in public places because laïcité is a central part of the French constitution. This is historically a consequence of the French revolution and the removal from the Church of the great powers and controls, which it had enjoyed prior to the revolution. Arguably this is now of less importance and the symbolic power of the ban is to identify to citizens the power of the State over minority religions; while it is true that the wearing of the cross by a Christian teacher is banned just as firmly as the covering of hair by a Muslim teacher, the social representation of the ban is that it is perceived by Muslims as being directly discriminating against them, given that covering the head is part of the requirements of Islam while the wearing of a cross is not essential to Christian practice. Social representation theory (SRT) is important in our understanding of behaviour because it explains the way in which our attitudes and consequent behaviours are informed by social practices such as discussions, media representations and cultural representations. It also helps explain the ways in which people form attitudes to people and objects which are outside their own direct experiences. So, it may be that people hold negative 74

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views of cultural and ethnic minorities, such as refugees or Muslims with whom they have had no personal contact; SRT explains this through the drawing on group cultural representations to inform attitudes and beliefs. Craig (2002) suggests that the diffusion of social responsibility and insensitivity to any restraints is characteristic of hate crime offenders, particularly those acting in groups or in the presence of group members. As group size increases, the perpetrator feels less responsibility on a personal level for the outcome of his actions, while the presence of others gives support and affirmation to the person’s hatred for the victim’s group. This can lead to an increase in the individual’s group-orientation in tandem with a perception that the perpetrator’s in-group is in some manner being victimised by society, particularly when broader societal attitudes and/or legislation stigmatise hate offenders (Brown 1997). The effect is exaggerated when groups, which have historically been advantaged relative to minority groups are required by legislation to relinquish that advantage – while most people pay lip service to equality in the abstract, its implementation is resisted by some. A consequence of the impact of emerging group norms is that people in different demographic groups will perceive hate crimes differently dependent on the demographic characteristics of both victims and offenders (Craig and Waldo 1996). They found that while there was consensus between different demographic groups as to what constituted a hate crime, participants who were from ethnic minorities were twice as likely as were Caucasian participants to state explicitly that hate crime motivations included that the victim was a minority group member and this group was also more likely to mention the race and gender of the perpetrator as being salient (ibid.). They also found that the evaluation of the severity of a hate crime was dependent on demographic characteristics of victim and perpetrator (ibid.). They presented participants with scenarios in which motivations for the assault were varied (by motivation based on race, religion, sexual orientation or unclear) and where the gender of the victim was varied (ibid.). They found that these factors influenced assessment of the seriousness of the crime and that the gender and racial characteristics of the offender also influenced their perceptions of the offence (ibid.). In another study Craig (1999) showed participants from Caucasian and from AfricanAmerican backgrounds videotaped assaults. The assaults showed same-race or different-race attacks. Overall, participants found both types of assault unpleasant to view but AfricanAmerican participants viewed different-race assaults as being more frequent and more typical than did Caucasian students. They also noted that they would expect victims to return to the scene with friends at a later time to seek revenge. This could be linked to their being more likely to have experienced direct or vicarious experience of being victims of hate-assault. They might also be aware of the contemporary bias in the conviction rates and sentences for hate crimes; DeSantis and Kayson (1997) found in mock trials that African-American defendents were more likely to be convicted than were Caucasian defendants in identical cases across the full range of offending, from relatively minor crimes such as theft to more serious offending such as assault, drug dealing etc. and that they were given heavier sentences. The implications for understanding responses to religious-based hate crimes and their victims were that perceptions of culpability of minorities and majorities are skewed to the advantage of majority groups. However, Marcus-Newhall, Blake and Baumann (2002) found that the perpetrator was more likely to be seen as guilty of a hate crime when he was Caucasian and the victim was African-American, regardless of the ethnicity of the rater, suggesting that in-group favouritism was not always in operation. The authors suggest that it may be that as a majority-perpetrator on minority-victim crime was consonant with societal experience and hence the dominant social-representation may have been a factor in the findings. 75

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Mechanisms and processes of group identification Although it is known that experience of group-based hostility can increase minority group identification, little work has been conducted exploring the mechanisms through which such discrimination influences identification and intergroup attitudes. Hutchison, Lubna, GoncalvesPortelinha, Kamali and Khan (2015) conducted an elegantly designed study exploring compatibility between identities (British and Muslim), group-based discrimination and identification and attitudes in British Muslims. The paradigms used allowed the direct examination of the link between discrimination and attitudes to the dominant (British) identity. They noted that while some perceived their religious and national identities as being complementary (Hopkins 2011) for others the minority identity was most salient, with feelings that their minority identity and its associated norms and expectations risked being threatened within the dominant group. Hutchison et al. (2015) investigated the extent to which group-based discrimination could predict the responses of minorities in terms of their attitudes to the dominant culture and identification. The implications for understanding both the dynamics and consequences of hate crime are clear; if experience of hate and discrimination short of physical assault cause a hostility to the dominant culture then this has consequences for multi-religious and multi-cultural communities’ harmony. When participants in the study (British Muslim students at a British university) were given a highly anti-Muslim newspaper article to read, and then told that the ideas expressed had either little support or much support from the general public, the level of perceived support had a powerful effect on their affiliation to their religious identity. The impact of the information that the hostile newspaper article had ‘much support’ from the majority group was to lead the participants to believe that there was an incompatibility between being British and being Muslim, and, in turn, this impacted on the extent to which they identified as being Muslim (rather than having a dual compatible identity as British and Muslim) and on their attitudes to British non-Muslims. Thus, inter-group conflict and mistrust can be generated by non-physical expressions of hate (the actual article used had been referred for prosecution for incitement to racial hatred though in the end no prosecution took place), and this conflict can provide the platform for further inter-group conflict and hostility. The researchers did note that while the effect they found was powerful, the mean identity-incompatibility scores for the sample were low, indicating that the British Muslims in their sample did not view being Muslim and being British as mutually exclusive.

Psychological implications of being a victim of hate crime There has been little research on the psychological implications of hate crime for recipients of hate attacks, verbal and physical, which are focused on Muslims, compared to the amount of research into those implications for minorities from other groups who have experienced hate-based transgressions. Nadal, Griffin, Hamit, Leon, Tobio and Rivera (2012) studied the experience of microaggressions towards Muslim Americans on their psychological well-being. The interest in microaggressions (not always intended) has developed in tandem with an interest in implicit attitudes (Greenwald and Banaji 1995) and hate crimes. Implicit attitudes are attitudes which may occur without conscious awareness and develop from various influences in the individual’s social, emotional and material world. Microaggressions send negative and denigrating messages to people who belong to minority and marginalised groups; they may be unintended but still have a powerful effect. Recipients may be confused, wondering if the slur was intentional or if they have been oversensitive; being on the receiving end of microaggressions can be psychologically and cognitively draining (Nadal 2008). Nadal et al. (2012) noted 76

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that Muslims in the USA typically occupy several demographic positions; they might also be ethnic minorities, immigrants (nearly 70% of Muslims in the USA are immigrants from over 80 different countries), younger and more educated than the general American population. Thus, it can be hard, firstly to identify microaggressions as such and secondly to identify the basis for the particular aggression experienced (racial, socio-economic, religious, linguistic). Nadal et al. (2010) developed a categorisation system for the variants of Islamophobic micro-aggressions experienced by Muslims and which are independent of race, ethnicity or other demographic factors. These include: • • • • • •

The emphasising of religious stereotypes such as that Muslims are terrorists – so, statements or actions that indicate false descriptions of particular religious groups. Exoticisation whereby the foreignness or exotic nature of some aspect of the religion is appropriated by the dominant group. Pathologising specific religious groups by equating their traditional practices with sin, deviance or stupidity. Assumption that the speaker’s religious identity is the norm, for example assuming that everyone goes to Confession. Assumption of religious homogeneity in which the assumption is made that all believers in a particular religion share identical practices, such as that all Muslim women will always wear head coverings. Denial of religious prejudice in which a person denies that a comment or action is indicative of religious bias and seeks instead to blame the recipient of the comment for being overly sensitive.

Nadal et al. (2012) used a qualitative analysis of focus group interview data to explore the pervasiveness of Islamophobic microaggressions. They ran two focus groups, each containing five adult Muslim participants of diverse ethnic origins. As well as recording the focus groups, observers made a note of the clothing worn (three of the seven female participants wore the hijab) and self-reports of ethnic background and race. The interview transcripts were analysed using a directed content analysis, focusing on the six categories outlined above. The researchers found six themes emerging from their analysis: • • • • • •

endorsing stereotypes of Muslims as terrorists; Muslim religion as pathology; the assumption of religious homogeneity; exoticisation; Islamophobic language use; and alien in own land.

Four of the themes identified mirrored those of Nadal et al. (2010); the last two themes were new. On examining the transcripts and quotes taken from the transcripts, it was apparent that many of the comments and experiences used to derive the themes were quite subtle; the participants felt the incident was aggressive and hateful but believed they could not prove that Islamophobia was involved or necessarily intended, such as a woman describing an incident where an airport security guard at Schiphol Airport (away from the security and passport check area) asked to see her passport, then requested her to accompany him, telling her that the picture in her passport did not resemble her. While he did not mention her religion, she believed she had been stopped because she wore a hijab. Another woman, a white Muslim convert, reported 77

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that at dinner one night her brother had asked if, when she went to mosque, she heard when the next bombing would be; she felt he had not understood that this was offensive, but assumed that all Muslims were terrorists and that the mosque was a place where terrorism would be planned. Religious microaggressions can be intentional or unintentional; however, participants in this study reported instances of discrimination which were effectively verbal assaults. In addition, the researchers identified ‘passers’ (Hirschman 1970) – that is individuals who can pass for nonMuslim, possibly on the basis of dress, everyday practices and behaviours or possibly because of physical appearance. When an individual passes as a member of the dominant group, he may be allowed privileges not accessable to those who cannot pass and may not be exposed to the same level of microaggression. However, it may also be the case that a ‘passing’ Muslim may be exposed to a higher level of microaggressions as speakers assume he/she is ‘one of them’ and hence not feel the need to be restrained in their comments. In terms of the lived experience of individuals exposed to microaggressions it is important that organisations are aware of the potential for aggression and discrimination and actively engage in countering it.

Psychological factors in predisposition to commit hate crime Research into the psychological factors predisposing an individual to enact hate crimes have followed one of two major pathways; they have focused on the broad socio-cultural-economic factors which might lead to an increase in hate crime or they have (in a very few cases) looked at psychological and personality factors internal to the individual. The work of McDevitt et al. (2002) cited above encompasses both approaches although the majority of hate crime is attributed, within their model to cultural factors such as group-based motivators, rather than on internal predispositions. Further arguments seeking to explain hate crime as being located primarily in socio-economic factors emanate from the aggression-frustration hypothesis first proposed by Hovland and Sears (1940) in which it was stated that the frustration associated with periods of economic decline, or in geographical locations of economic decline, would produce aggressive impulses which would be directed at minorities or any vulnerable group, regardless of whether that group could be seen as responsible for the economic decline. Effectively, hostility is directed not towards a broad or abstract concept such as ‘economic change’ but to individuals who, while totally unconnected causally to these economic changes, can be identified as members of minority out-groups and hostility to them is justified simply on the basis that they are not ‘one of us’. Incidentally this is an explanation which has been offered in the popular press to explain the election of Donald Trump as president of the USA in 2016. Green, Glaser and Rich (1998) investigated the validity of using this model to explain hate crime. They collected data on hate crime in a metropolitan region (New York City) on a monthly over a period of nine years and modelled the change in incidents of hate crime associating the figures with the monthly unemployment data from that area. This was the best indicator of economic status available. The dependent variable of Hate Crime was defined as acts of vandalism, violence, harassment or intimidation directed against a person because of their religion, ethnicity, race or sexuality. Green et al did not partition out data for each of these four different groups. Although the logic of frustration-aggression would suggest that hate crimes against minorities would become more numerous during periods of economic downturn as people vented their frustration on an available scapegoat, Green, Glaser and Rich (1998) found no such robust and consistent relationship between economic conditions and the incidence of hate crime, suggesting that this was not a good predictor for (or explanation of) hate offending. Although socio-economic status of a group is not in itself a predictor of hate offending there are indications that being a member of a group perceived in some way as being in need of 78

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defending has the potential to valorise individual group members to engage in aggressive behaviour even if this might place their own lives at risk. Swann et al. (2014) explored the processes which led to individuals who felt a very strong affiliation to a group, akin to the powerful emotional ties one would feel for family and loved ones, to make exceptional and extreme sacrifices for that groups, to the point of being prepared to die for that group. In a series of studies which encompassed participants in six continents, participants were asked to rate their agreement on a series of scales such as ‘I would fight someone physically threatening another person from my country’, ‘If someone in my country is hurt or in danger, it is like a family member is hurt or in danger’ or ‘I would sacrifice my life if it saved another country member’s life’. The explanation proposed for such responses is outlined in identity fusion theory (Swann, Jetten, Gomez, Whitehouse and Bastian 2012); identity fusion exists where a person feels such a powerful, almost visceral sense of oneness with a group that it is akin to feelings for his family. Hence, the outcome of the fusion process is a person who believes that his actions in the interests of the group are not for unknown strangers but for ‘family’. The fusion involves a union of personal identity and social identity (Tajfel and Turner 1979) with both identities retaining equal meaningfulness and providing the basis for action. It can be seen as a form of group identification (Postmes, Haslam and Jans 2013). Within fusion theory individuals may form exceptionally strong bonds with other group members; in addition, the ties that group members may form with other group members, either in person or via written or electronic communication, serve to cement the fusion with the group. Effectively once fusion is achieved the ties with the group become stronger and more psychologically difficult to sever. This combination of emotional and relational ties predisposes individuals to be prepared to undertake action in the group’s interest even where that action may risk the individual’s health, freedom or even life itself. The large groups to which a person belongs can include countries, political parties, religious groups and gangs. Priming a person with information enabling him to perceive the group as sharing core characteristics with that person will encourage the person to believe that the group is significant in defining who he is. Exposure to a shared characteristic will prime the individual to not only fuse with the group but to understand the group members as having a common element or essence, which distinguishes them form non-group members and which forms the core of that individual. The aim of Swann et al.’s (2012) series of studies was to explore the processes of fusion and the extent to which priming the core characteristics of groups in individuals would promote the perception of family-type relationships and validate self-sacrifice. Their methodology encompassed surveys, experiments and mediated analysis. They found that while in all eleven countries studied (Australia, Chile, China, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, India, Poland, South Africa, Spain and the USA) participants could be primed to develop a fused identity with their country and were prepared to risk death for their country, this preparedness was not as strong as the preparedness to risk harm or death for their family group and there were moderator variables which influenced the extent of the sacrifice participants were prepared to make for their country. Where group members were primed with information about genetic similarity between group members, this influenced their willingness to take chances for their group. Participants were allocated to two conditions; in condition one the members were told that members of racial groups had high levels of genetic similarity, in condition two the participants were primed with information that members of racial groups did not share common genes. Regression analysis of the data generated indicated a significant finding that priming shared biological characteristics strengthens the relationship between fusion and endorsement of extreme behaviour. These findings indicate that where group members are indoctrinated into beliefs whereby the biological basis for difference between groups is the main focus of attention (such as in Nazi Germany 79

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in the 1930s in their persecution of Jews and Roma, or in Islamophobic hate groups such as the Front Nationale in contemporary France) then holding fused group membership will predispose the individual to aggressive and risky behaviour towards out-group members. That said, in many countries shared genes are not a common source of a sense of communality; in these countries, it is the shared values which are incorporated into the fused identity and valorise individuals to engage in acts which endorse the in-group. Replication of the priming studies using shared core values rather than genetic similarity as the priming variable produced data which, when analysed through regression analysis, indicated that the relationship between fusion and endorsement of self-sacrifice was higher in the shared core value priming group. Overall it was found that there was a significant gender difference effect; males were more inclined to endorse extreme behaviour than were females. Swann et al. (2012) note the identification of fused individuals with other group members on a familial level, and suggest that this could explain their willingness to risk their own futures in acting in the group interest; they believed that such individuals believe they will ‘live on’ through their group. This ‘living on’ should not, as Swann et al. (2012) emphasise, be seen as a kind of continuance through word of mouth or having a place in the group’s history and collective memory; rather it is seen by participants as a form of continuance over future generations which is consistent with the evolutionary psychology perspective on self-sacrifice. Evolutionary psychology proposes that there is an evolved kin-detection system in humans (as in other species), which regulates the decision to take a risk for the benefit of the biological family. Swann et al. (2012) propose that their findings of the importance of collective relationships and allegiances, further reaching than those postulated in SIT have implications for our understanding of inter-group dynamics. The research also has implications for our ability to predict who might engage in aggressive acts against other group, that is, who might engage in hate crime. Arguably it also offers the framework for considering interventions which might take place with individuals who are at risk of engaging in aggressive behaviour against out-groups as a consequence of their perceptions of the needs of their fused racial, national or religious group.

Role of psychological disorders There have been limited attempts to understand hate and hate crime as having origins in psychological disorders other than viewing the underpinning attitudes as erroneous or a consequence of cognitive distortion. Dunbar (1997) challenged this absence noting that a person who had negative views of a particular out-group would be likely to experience psychological ill-health symptoms as a reaction to attempts to maintain such a problematic view of the world. He argued the focus of cross-cultural psychology and those doing research into prejudice against specific groups had failed to consider the potential role of clinical psychology in assessing and responding to clients who demonstrated prejudiced beliefs and behaviours. After Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson and Sanford published their work on the authoritarian personality and consequent maladaptive and hostile behaviours in 1950, there has been little attempt to assess prejudiced attitudes and intervene from a clinical perspective. Gough (1951) developed the Prejudice Scale, using items taken from the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory), a scale widely used by psychiatrists and clinical psychologists assessing serious psychological disorders. His research identified the characteristics of those scoring high on the prejudice scale as being tormented, resentful, peevish and confused. His scale correlated significantly with the Sanford Anti-Semitism scale and with some of the MMPI subscales including dysphoria, mania and schizophrenia. Gough (1951) argued that the sores on his scale showed a direct connection between the presence of an out-group bias and psychopathology. Heim (1992) 80

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noted that, in clinical terms, prejudice was associated with the client manifesting behaviours associated with problems of empathic failure, impulsivity and a hypersensitivity towards outgroup members. Gough’s (1951) study encompassed an evaluation of the relationship between diagnosis and the broader clinical assessment, which revealed the extent to which symptoms were present. Specifically, Gough (1951) focused on the Axis II disorders on DSM IV, in both the Cluster A (odd and eccentric personality disturbance) and Cluster B (impulsive and dramatic personality disturbance). He drew on a large sample of adult clients at a psychotherapy clinic drawn from a mixed socio-economic demographic and a range of racial backgrounds. He found a consistent relationship between out-group bias and an impulsive, emotionally estranged style of interpersonal communication. Patients with conduct disorder problems typically have impulse management issues; it appears from Gough’s (1951) research that this may be causally related to prejudiced attitudes, aggression and hostility to out-groups rather than merely coexisting with such aggression. His findings suggested that through clinical diagnosis procedures, clients could be identified as clinically prejudiced and that, in terms of symptoms, this prejudice was associated with patterns of disturbed social relationships, suspicion and a lack of engagement with reality. This is not to say that all people exhibiting out-group hostility and aggression can be viewed as having a mental health problem but it offers an insight into possible pathways into aggression towards an out-group for some individuals.

Conclusion It seems to be an obvious truth to state, as do Levin and McDevitt (1993), that the main characteristic of hate crime offenders is bigotry. However, the research findings and theoretical material discussed above suggest that understanding the psychology of hate crime offending involves more than categorising perpetrators in this simple way; the complex relationships between group identification, the need for group identity and to occupy a role within the group, an individual’s life experiences and the impact of these on perceptions of others, and personality characteristics intrinsic to the individual, demonstrate that it is not easy to predict who will and who will not become a hate crime offender. It seems desirable to be able to identify some powerful predictive instrument which we could apply to individuals at risk of such offending; having identified the individuals we could then consider ways of neutralising that risk (of course, that presupposes the existence of a strategy which would be effective rather than counterproductive). What kind of instrument would be appropriate? Personality measures would not encompass the whole story while a focus on the demographic group which might be intuited to have the kind of group experiences of perceived exclusion and impotence risks further stigmatising individuals and forcing them into a position where they are more, rather than less, likely to take aggressive action. The work of Swann et al. (2012) into the willingness of individuals with fused group identities to risk harm to themselves or even death in the interests of their own group and the beliefs in ‘living on’ which accompany this willingness is an indicator of the risk that forcing potential perpetrators into a polarised position might increase rather than eliminate the possibility of hate crime offending. However, it is not tenable to accept that hate crime happens and there is little one can do to stop them; understanding the psychology of hate crime offending should be a precursor to action to prevent it. As the research of Hutchison et al. (2015) and that of Nadal et al. (2012) indicate, the consequence of failure to address the issue of aggressions – whether major attacks or microaggressions – is a further polarisation of views within both offender groups and victim groups, with a focus on a future for these populations which involves at best separation and at worst hostility, violence and murder. 81

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References Adorno, T., Frenkel-Brunswick, E., Levinson, D. and Sanford, R. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper and Row. Brown, T. 1997. Hate crime, stress, and bigotry in the late twentieth century: where are we headed? African American Research Perspectives, 30, 21–29. Chakraborti, N. and Garland, J. 2009. Hate Crime: Impact, Causes and Responses. London: Sage. Craig, K. 1999. Teaching students about hate and changing awareness. Teaching of Psychology, 26, 44–45. Craig, K. 2002. Examining hate-motivated aggression. A review of the social psychological literature on hate crimes as a distinct form of aggression. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 7, 85–101. Craig, K. and Waldo, C. 1996. ‘So, what’s a hate crime anyway?’ Young adults perceptions of hate crimes, victims, and perpetrators. Law and Human Behavior, 20, 113–129. DeSantis, A. and Kayson, W. 1997. Defendants’ characteristics of attractiveness, race and sex and sentencing decisions. Psychological Reports, 81, 679–683. Dunbar, E. 1997. The relationship of DSM diagnostic criteria and Gough’s Prejudice Scale: exploring the clinical manifestations of the prejudiced personality. Cultural Diversity and Mental Health, 3(4), 247–257. Gough, H. 1951. Studies of social intolerance: II. A personality scale of anti-Semitism. Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 247–255. Green, D., Glaser, J. and Rich, A. 1998. From lynching to gay bashing: the elusive connection between economic conditions and hate crime. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 15(1), 82–92. Greenwald, A. and Banaji, M. 1995. Implicit social cognition: measurement, theory and application. Psychological Review, 102(1), 4–27. Heim, R. 1992. Hatred of foreigners and purity – current aspects of an illusion: social and psychoanalytic considerations. Psyche, 46, 710–729. Hirschman, A. 1970. Exit, Voice and Loyalty. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hopkins, N. 2011. Dual identities and their recognition: minority group members’ perspectives. Political Psychology, 32, 251–270. Hovland, C. and Sears, R. 1940. Minor studies of aggression: VI. correlations of lynchings with economic indices. The Journal of Psychology, 9, 301–310. Hutchison, P., Lubna, S., Goncalves-Portelinha, I., Kamali, P. and Khan, N. 2015. Group-based discrimination, national identification, and British Muslims’ attitudes towards non-Muslims: the mediating role of perceived identity compatibility. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 45, 330–344. Klein, O., Spears, R. and Reicher, S. 2007. Social identity performance: extending the strategic side of SIDE. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(1), 28–45. Leader, T. Mullen, B. and Abrams, D. 2007. Without mercy: the impact of group size on lynch mob atrocity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(10), 1340–1352. Levin, J. and McDevitt, J. 1993. Hate Crimes: the rising tide of bigotry and bloodshed. New York: Plenum. Marcus-Newhall, A., Blake, L. and Baumann, J. 2002. Perceptions of hate crime perpetrators and victims as influenced by race, political orientation, and peer group. American Behavioral Scientist, 46(1), 108–135. McDevitt, J., Levin, J. and Bennett, S. 2002. Hate crime offenders: an expanded typology. Journal of Social Issues, 38(2), 301–317. Moscovici, S. 1988. Notes towards a description of social representations. Journal of European Social Psychology, 18(3), 211–250. Nadal, K. 2008. Preventing racial, ethnic, gender, sexual minority, disability and religious microaggressions. Prevention in Counseling Psychology: Theory, Research, Practice and Training, 2(1), 22–27. Nadal, K., Griffin, K., Hamit, S., Leon, J., Tobio, M. and Rivera, D. 2012. Subtle and overt forms of Islamophobia: microaggressions towards Muslim Americans. Journal of Muslim Mental Health, 6(2), 15–37. Nadal, K., Issa, M., Griffin, K., Hamit, S. and Lyons, O. 2010. Religious micro-aggressions in the United States: mental health implications for religious minority groups. In D. Sue (ed.), Micro-aggressions and Marginality: Manifestations, dynamics and impact (pp. 287–310). New York: Wiley. Postmes, T., Hallam, S. and Jans, L. 2013. A single item measure of social identification: reliability, validity and utility. British Journal of Social Psychology, 52, 597–617. Rafiq, U., Jobanuptra, N. and Muncer, S. 2006. Comparing the perceived causes of the second Iraq war. Aggressive Behavior, 32, 321–329. Reicher, S. 2001. The psychology of crowd dynamics. In M. Hogg and R. Tindale (eds), Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Group Processes (pp. 182–208). Oxford: Blackwell. 82

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Swann, W., Buhrmester, M., Gomez, A., Jetten, J., Bastian, B., Vazquez, A., Ariyanto, A., Besta, T., Christ, O., Cui, L., Finchilescu, G., Gonzales, R., Goto, N., Hornsey, M., Sharma, S., Susianto, H. and Zhang, A. 2014. What makes a group worth dying for? Identity fusion fosters perception of familial ties, promoting self-sacrifice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, (6), 912–926. Swann, W., Jetten J., Gomez, A., Whitehouse, H. and Bastian, B. 2012. When group membership gets personal: a theory of identity fusion. Psychological Review, 119, 441–456. Tajfel, H. and Turner, J. 1979. An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. Austin and S. Worchel (eds), The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations (pp. 33–47). Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole. Turner, R. and Killian, L. 1987. Collective Behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Weng, S. 2004. The self-perpetuation of biased beliefs. The Economic Journal, 114(April), 377–396. Zimbardo, P. 1970. The Human choice: individuation, reason and order versus de-individuation, impulse and chaos. In W. Arnold and E. Levine (eds), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Vol 18 (pp. 237–307). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

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7 ‘Your pain is my pain’ Examining the community impacts of Islamophobic hate crimes Jenny L. Paterson, Mark A. Walters and Rupert Brown

Introduction Islamophobic hate crimes1 continue to blight communities throughout the United Kingdom. Recent statistics from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) show that Muslim adults in England and Wales are more likely to be a victim of both racially and religiously motivated hate crime than any other category of adults (Corcoran et al. 2015). With recorded incidents of racial and religious hate crimes on the rise (ibid.; Corcoran and Smith 2016), this type of victimisation is likely to have considerable impacts on individual Muslims – and, in turn, Muslim communities more generally. In this chapter we start by documenting Muslim individuals’ direct and indirect experiences of hate crimes and examine how these experiences affect their emotional and behavioural reactions to an imagined hate crime scenario. In the second part of the chapter we explore Muslim individuals’ perceptions of how well the Government, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) are doing with regards to combating Islamophobic hate crime. The study shows that Islamophobic hate crimes not only traumatise direct victims, but are likely to spread fear and anger throughout Muslim communities. Incidents are also likely to impact upon individuals’ community involvement and avoidant behaviours, while also damaging their perceptions of, and confidence in, the police and CPS.

Understanding the impacts of hate crime Much has been written about the impacts of hate crime generally, helping us to understand why hate motivated incidents are likely to cause significant emotional traumas to those who are victimised (e.g. Herek et al. 2002; Herek et al. 1999; see Walters 2014: ch 3 for a summary of this literature). In essence, research has shown hate crimes are more likely to result in victims feeling angry, fearful of repeat victimisation, vulnerable, anxious and depressed, compared with non-hate crimes (see e.g. Herek et al. 1999, 2002; McDevitt et al. 2001). Research has also found that many victims apportion blame on themselves for having invited their victimisation for being ‘too visible’ (Bell and Perry 2015). Such occasions can leave victims feeling a sense of guilt and/or shame for their own victimisation (see e.g. Dick 2008). In relation to Islamophobic hate crime, recent studies have shown that incidents can result in feelings of vulnerability, anxiety, depression and anger, with some victims also experiencing 84

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post-traumatic stress disorder (Awan and Zempi 2015; Abu-Ras and Suarez 2009; Zempi and Chakraborti 2014; Perry 2014). The reason for these heightened traumas has been linked to the fact that Islamophobia purposively subjugates and seeks to destroy a person’s Muslim identity, often through acts of violence. Ultimately, these hate-based attacks can destabilise an individual’s sense of self, seemingly making their world appear a much more malevolent place. Such an outcome can have significant behavioural and spatial impacts (e.g. Perry 2014; Awan and Zempi 2015). Awan and Zempi (2015), for example, found that experiences of Islamophobia influenced participants’ sense of belonging and feelings of safety, which resulted in participants engaging in avoidant strategies (e.g. not leaving the house; hiding their Muslim identity) and employing additional security measures (e.g. adjusting online security settings). Conversely, for some, Islamophobic experiences resulted in strengthening their Muslim identity as well as their sense of ‘increased in-group solidarity’ (ibid., p. 376). These effects are not restricted to direct victims. The symbolic nature of hate incidents, it has been argued, serves to terrorise entire communities via what Iganski (2001) calls ‘waves of harm’. For instance, in the aftermath of the hate-motivated murder of Matthew Shepard, Noelle (2002) identified a ‘ripple effect’ in which the homophobic hate crime stoked fear and anxiety among other gay people who feared they too could be targeted in such a way (see also Perry and Alvi 2012; Bell and Perry 2015). These indirect effects plainly show that hate motivated incidents send a clear message to those who are ‘different’ that they are unwelcome, unworthy and undeserving of social respect and are pertinent to understanding the effects of Islamophobic hate crimes. As Awan and Zempi (2015) note, many Muslim people now live within a British society where Islamophobia has become endemic and where Muslim individuals are commonly the targets of hate-motivated crimes. Such offences are not only likely to lead Muslim individuals to view society as unsafe and dangerous, but they are also likely to increase the expectation of further attacks, which make individuals feel personally vulnerable (Awan and Zempi 2015; Paterson, Brown, and Walters 2018a; also see Perry 2014 and Poynting and Perry 2007 for similar consequences in Canadian and Australian contexts). From a social psychological perspective, social identity theory (SIT; Tajfel and Turner 1986) and intergroup emotions theory (IET: Mackie et al. 2009) help us to understand why the harms of Islamophobic hate spread across Muslim communities. In general terms, SIT suggests that individuals who share important beliefs and interests form social groups with one another, either in actuality or subjectively (usually both). Such groups give rise to social identities that are shared by group members and help to define how the group – and its constituent members – think, feel and act. The group also fosters important emotional bonds between group members. The ‘ummah’ in the Qur’an typifies this type of social group as scholars suggest that it refers to all Muslim people as a ‘community’ who are bound together by the ties of their similar religious beliefs (e.g. Hassan 2006; Hossain 2012). Group formation is achieved and maintained by the psychological process of ‘self-stereotyping’ (Turner et al. 1987). Given some minimal level of identification, group members assume for themselves what they perceive to be the stereotypical, identity-defining attributes of the group. These may be relatively enduring ‘prototypical’ characteristics seen to comprise the group (e.g. particular life-style features such as clothing or physical appearance, or certain behavioural traits), or may be more temporary attributes such as perceived ‘appropriate’ attitudes or emotions (e.g. in response to specific intergroup events such as an external threat). Because such self-stereotypic responses are usually socially shared, members of groups often come to display common patterns of thinking and behaviour in response to particular situations. IET adds to SIT by explaining that when the group is central to the individual, what happens to the group or, by extension, other group members, will be felt as though it is 85

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happening to them. This then means that members will feel and react to the situation (good or bad) as though it was they who were personally involved. Hence, an Islamophobic attack on a Muslim individual (or symbolic property such as a mosque) is likely to be felt by other Muslims (the ummah) as an attack, not just on an individual, but on all Muslims and Islam and all that the religion symbolises. Consequently, this is likely to lead to certain emotional and behavioural reactions throughout the community, which are in line with those that are likely to be experienced by the direct victim. This theoretical understanding of the indirect impacts of hate crime is persuasive, yet little is known empirically (at least quantitatively) about the indirect consequences of such attacks. It is to such evidence that we now turn.

Research design and sample The research for this chapter is drawn from the Sussex Hate Crime Project (Paterson, Walters, Brown, and Fearn 2018), which seeks to understand the direct and indirect impacts of both Islamophobic and anti-LGBT hate crime in the UK. The current analyses focus on participants who self-identified as Muslim2 and who currently live in the UK. A total of 347 respondents were recruited from a variety of sources including via links on social media distributed by the project and its partners (e.g. MEND, Muslim Council of Britain, and various Muslim student organisations). Adverts were also placed on Facebook and paper surveys were distributed at the ‘Global Peace & Unity’ Muslim conference in 2013. The participants were aged between 17 and 75 years old, with an average age of 33 years. There were 195 females, 151 males and one person who did not provide an answer. Participants were from a variety of different ethnicities, with the majority being Asian (n = 204), with White (n = 51) and Arab (n = 40) also being relatively common. There were over 30 nationalities represented, with British being most common (n = 227).

Experiences of Islamophobic hate crime Direct experiences As the central aim of the survey was to assess the impacts of respondents’ experiences of hate crimes, participants were asked to think of all the times they had been a victim of five specific crimes and incidents3 in the past three years. These crimes/incidents were: verbal abuse, online abuse, vandalism, physical assault and physical assault with a weapon. Following this stem question, participants indicated ‘How many of these incident(s) do you think occurred because the attacker(s) were (partly) motivated by a prejudice against Muslim people?’ These items measured their direct experiences with Islamophobic hate crimes and are shown in Figures 7.1 and 7.2.4 Consistent with CSEW data and other research (Corcoran et al. 2015; Corcoran and Smith 2016; Littler and Feldman 2015), Figures 7.1 and 7.2 show that Islamophobic hate crimes were common experiences for respondents. Verbal and online abuse, in particular, were very common with over two thirds of the sample (n = 243) having been a victim of at least one form of abuse in the past 3 years. In line with other data in this area (Corcoran et al. 2015), we found a significant proportion of participants had experienced repeat victimisation, with 28 per cent stating that they had been a victim of verbal abuse four times or more and 21 per cent suffering four instances or more of online abuse. Direct experiences of Islamophobic assault, though less frequent, were still worryingly common, with 16 per cent of participants having been assaulted within the past 3 years and 10 per cent having been assaulted with a weapon. 86

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Percentage of part icipants

100% 90%

15%

80%

13%

15% 6%

70%

20%

60%

7 instances or more 4 to 6 instances

35%

50%

1 to 3 instances

40% 30%

0 instances

59%

20%

37%

10% 0% Verbal abuse

Online abuse

Figure 7.1  Frequency of direct experiences of Islamophobic verbal abuse and online abuse.

100% Percentage of part icipants

4% 95%

2%

90%

9%

3%

1% 1%

2% 8% 5 instances or more 11%

3 to 4 instances 1 to 2 instances

85% 90% 80%

85%

84%

Vandalism

Physical assault

0 instances

75% Physical assault with a weapon

Figure 7.2  Frequency of direct experiences of Islamophobic vandalism and physical assaults.

Indirect experiences To understand the community impacts of these crimes, participants were asked about their indirect experiences of the Islamophobic hate crimes described above. They were instructed to think about victims who they personally knew but that ‘You don’t need to be close friends with the victims, but you do need to know them (i.e., not just seen them on TV).’ Again, they were asked about their indirect experiences within the past 3 years.5 As Figure 7.3 shows, knowledge of others’ Islamophobic victimisation was prevalent: 78 per cent knew someone who had been verbally abused, 59 per cent who had been abused online, 45 per cent who had their property vandalised, 48 per cent who had been assaulted, and 35 per cent who had been assaulted with a weapon. These indirect experiences were not oneoff instances. Indeed, 12 per cent of participants knew more than three people who had been verbally abused over the past three years, while 17 per cent knew more than three people who had been physically assaulted in an Islamophobic attack. 87

J. L. Paterson, M. A. Walters and R. Brown 100%

8% 4%

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90% 80%

9%

9%

29%

9%

8%

9%

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Online abuse

0 people

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7 people or more

Figure 7.3  Frequency of indirect experiences of Islamophobic hate crimes.

The indirect impacts of Islamophobic hate crime Analysis strategy To examine the community impacts of Islamophobic hate crimes, we split the participants into three groups based on their previous direct and indirect experiences with Islamophobic assaults:6 • • •

No experience: 50% of participants had not been a victim of an Islamophobic assault and did not personally know of a victim. Indirect: 34% had not been a victim of an Islamophobic assault but did personally know of a victim. Direct & indirect:7 16% had been a victim of an Islamophobic assault and personally knew of another victim.

The impacts of Islamophobic hate crime To explore the threat posed by Islamophobia, participants were asked to what extent they thought Islamophobic hate crime posed a threat to themselves and other Muslims in the UK. This perceived threat measure included items such as ‘I worry about being a victim of an Islamophobic hate crime or incident’ and ‘I believe Islamophobic hate crimes and hate incidents pose a real threat to the physical safety of other Muslims’. This scale, and the other scales reported below, was measured on a 1–7 agreement scale. Participants who had Direct & indirect experiences and those who had Indirect experiences reported feeling significantly more threatened by Islamophobic hate crimes than participants who had No experience (at the p < 0.05 level). Those who had only Indirect experiences reported similarly high levels of perceived threat as those who had also been a direct victim (Means: Direct = 5.49; Indirect = 5.37; No experience = 4.13). Such a finding highlights the community impacts of Islamophobic hate crimes by suggesting that knowing of someone else’s

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experience of a hate crime heightens individuals’ perceived vulnerability to a similar extent as having actually been a victim themself. It also shows that Islamophobic hate crimes are threatening communicative acts that send messages of hostility throughout the community (Paterson, Brown, and Walters 2018; Williams and Burnap 2015). To assess reactions to Islamophobic hate crimes, participants were asked to ‘imagine that you find out that a Muslim person, who you did not personally know, was physically assaulted in an Islamophobic hate crime in the town where you live.’ Though the project could have asked participants to think of an incident they had actually experienced, this scenario was used to ensure that participants without any experiences could respond, thereby allowing us to make comparisons across the three sample groups (No experience, Indirect and Direct & indirect). By using the standardised scenario, we were also able to control for some of the characteristics of actual crimes that could account for differences in individuals’ reactions (e.g. closeness to the victim, severity of crime, location of the crime, etc.). Drawing on the current literature (see above), participants were asked to report their feelings of anger (‘angry’, ‘outraged’, ‘annoyed’, ‘appalled’), anxiety (‘anxious’, ‘afraid’, ‘alarmed’), and shame (‘ashamed’, ‘embarrassed’, ‘guilty’) after imagining the hate crime scenario. As shown in Figure 7.4, previous experiences with Islamophobic hate crimes had a significant impact on how participants responded emotionally to imagining a hate crime. While those who had no direct or indirect experience with an Islamophobic hate crime were angry and anxious (averages were above the mid-point of the scale for the No experience group), people with any experience with hate crimes were much more angry and anxious. Feelings of shame, however, were similarly low for all three groups. Illustrating the power of ‘vicarious victimisation’ (Perry and Alvi 2012), Muslim people with only Indirect experiences not only reported significantly higher levels of anger and anxiety than the No experience group, their heightened emotional reactions were similar to those who had also suffered direct victimisation. This is consistent with previous research (Awan and Zempi 2015; Abu-Ras and Suarez 2009; Zempi and Chakraborti 2014) and theories of social identity and intergroup emotions (and SIT: Tajfel and Turner 1986; e.g. IET: Mackie et al. 2009) and it shows that Islamophobic hate crimes are keenly felt by fellow Muslims causing significant emotional impacts across the community. 7

*

*

6

*

*

5 4 3 2 1

Anger

Anxiety No experience

Indirect only

Shame Direct and indirect

Figure 7.4  The impacts of Islamophobic hate crimes on emotional reactions. * Denotes a significant difference from the No experience group at p < 0.05.

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Behavioural impacts In addition to the heightened emotional reactions, Islamophobia can produce a wide range of behavioural responses. In trying to understand how Islamophobic hate crimes may impact other Muslim individuals’ behaviours, participants were asked what they were likely to do after imagining the hate crime scenario. These behavioural intentions8 included avoidance (e.g. ‘I would go out less often’), improved security (e.g. ‘I would improve the security of my home and my personal belongings (e.g. change locks, change passwords, improve house alarms)’), pro-action (e.g. ‘I would join and/or increase my participation in groups and charities that help Muslim people’), and retaliation (e.g. ‘If I could, I would try and get my own back on the offenders in some way’). Participants also reported the strength of their Muslim identity (e.g. ‘I feel good about being Muslim’). Experiences of Islamophobic hate crimes were again shown to have pronounced effects on the Muslim community (Figure 7.5). Of note, after imagining the hate crime, participants who had previous Indirect experiences of Islamophobic hate crimes reported that they would react significantly differently to those without any experience. Similar to individuals who had also been a direct victim, the Indirect group indicated that they would be more likely to engage in avoidant behaviours, improve their security, and increase their participation in Muslim groups (pro-action). They also reported a stronger Muslim identity than the No experience group, though this difference was only marginally significant (p < 0.06). All groups of participants were unlikely to want to retaliate and there were no significant differences between the groups on this measure. Taken together, the effects on behaviours and identity clearly show that simply knowing other people who have experienced an Islamophobic hate crime has significant impacts on Muslim people’s perceptions of belonging and safety. Supporting work with direct victims (e.g. Awan and Zempi 2015; Zempi and Chakraborti 2014), Islamophobic hate crimes seem to create a hostile environment in which Muslims live in an increased state of vigilance and isolation. Although the increase in pro-action and strength of Muslim identity could be seen as positive, it

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*

*

*

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Avoid

Security No experience

Pro-Action Indirect only

Retaliation

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Figure 7.5 The impact of Islamophobic hate crime on behavioural reactions and Muslim identity. * Denotes a significant difference from the No experience group at p < 0.05. † Denotes a difference from the No experience group at p = .06.

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may also be an indicator of how Islamophobic hate crimes contribute to the ostracism of Muslim people. Exemplifying this – in response to how Islamophobia had effected their identity – one of Awan and Zempi’s (2015) interviewees commented, ‘I am more passionate about my Muslim identity. I feel I don’t belong anywhere else’ (ibid., p. 376; emphasis added). Thus while engagement in Muslim groups and strengthening one’s identity may help individuals to find solace and protection, it may also lead to ‘voluntary segregation’, which threatens feelings of general belonging and social cohesion (Wachtel 2012). It should be noted that we found no evidence in this study that indirect hate crime primed participants for retaliation as others have warned (Craig 1999; Awan and Zempi 2015).

Attitudes towards the criminal justice system To combat the deleterious effects of hate crimes on communities, the UK (and elsewhere) has enacted legislation designed to deter and additionally penalise those who attempt to victimise people because of their identity (e.g. Crime and Disorder Act, 1998 (c.37), §§28–32; Criminal Justice Act, 2003 (c.44), §§145, 146). While these laws recognise the substantial impacts that these crimes have on individuals, communities, and society, their ‘success’ depends on their application and perceived effectiveness. To this end, the Sussex Hate Crime Project asked Muslim participants about their perceptions of hate crime laws, their beliefs about the policing of Islamophobic hate crimes, and their attitudes towards the bodies that prosecute (CPS) and legislate (the government) hate crimes. If hate crime is to be combated, victims and witnesses need to have confidence that the police will react swiftly, respectfully, and effectively when they report it. Unfortunately, while there is some evidence that the police continue to improve their responses to hate crime (Corcoran and Smith 2016), commonly targeted communities still tend to have low confidence in the police and view the organisation with suspicion, thereby affecting reporting levels (e.g. Awan 2013; Home Office 2013). To further understand Muslim individuals’ perceptions of the police, participants reported their opinions of the police in relation to Islamophobic hate crimes and their beliefs regarding how the police should deal with such offences.9

7 6

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Police are effective

Police are respectful No experience

Want more police in community Indirect only

Muslim officers to respond

Special procedures needed

Direct and indirect

Figure 7.6  The impacts of Islamophobic hate crimes on attitudes towards policing. * Denotes a significant difference from the No experience group at p < 0.05.

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In general, the police were viewed negatively by Muslim participants. All three groups thought the police were ineffective and not respectful when dealing with Islamophobic hate crimes (all averages were below the mid-point of the scales). Moreover, these negative attitudes towards the police were exacerbated by experiences with Islamophobic hate crimes. People with only Indirect experiences believed the police were even less effective and respectful than people without any experiences (though the latter finding was not statistically significant). Having Direct experiences made these attitudes even more unfavourable. The erosion of community confidence in the police’s ability to deal with Islamophobic hate crimes is a real cause for concern (Hall 2013). Without this confidence, individuals are less likely to report hate crimes to the police. For the victims of Islamophobia, this means that the perpetrators are free to act again and so feelings of vulnerability are likely to be increased further within Muslim communities. Such a situation is likely to lead to feelings amongst community members that Islamophobia is an expected and even normalised experience, giving rise to enhanced feelings of anxiety and anger (e.g. Awan and Zempi 2015). One possible way to improve attitudes towards the police is to show that the police listen and respond to the needs and wishes of the Muslim community when dealing with these crimes. To this end, we asked Muslim individuals three specific questions about how they thought the police should deal with Islamophobic hate crimes. Figure 7.6 shows that participants across the three groups were in favour of having more police in the community to deal with Islamophobic hate crimes; that they agreed that police services should have special procedures when dealing with Islamophobic hate crimes; and agreed that Muslim officers should respond to instances of Islamophobic hate crime (though the No experience group slightly disagreed with this measure). Those who had experienced Islamophobic hate crime first hand or indirectly were most in favour of these policies, inferring that their direct and indirect experiences had led them to recognise that greater police involvement and specialism is needed in order to tackle Islamophobic hate crimes. Although historically the police have come under immense criticism for the way they have over-policed certain minority communities (see Chakraborti and Garland 2015: ch. 9), there have been major improvements to the way police forces across the UK now respond to hate crime (Gianassi and Hall 2016). For example, a victim-centred definition of hate crime was implemented in police guidance from 2000 and officers are now required to record ‘non-crime’ incidents of hate (‘hate incidents’) as part of their policy on hate crime (College of Policing 2014). In London, there are specialist hate crime units (Community Safety Units) which have responsibility for investigating hate crimes, while many services also have a specialist ‘Force hate crime sergeant’ who will have responsibilities for co-ordinating operational guidance on policing hate crime in their area, and other BAME and LGBT police liaison officers who are specially trained on responding to hate crimes. Yet despite these numerous operational improvements, it was evident from our study that respondents from Muslim communities remained doubtful that the police would treat them respectfully. It was also clear that as a result of this, respondents’ generally wanted Muslim officers to respond to Islamophobic hate crimes. While this may not be practical in every Force, this finding is demonstrative of the need to ensure that police services throughout the country continue to strive to employ greater numbers of officers that represent the diverse communities that make up the UK, including those from Muslim communities. Further work is clearly also needed in communicating to Muslim communities the support that is on offer and the work that is being done in local communities to combat hate crime. Confidence in the police is the first step in ensuring that greater numbers of victims report hate crimes to the police; however, it is not only the police that victims must have faith in.

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If Muslim communities are to feel safe in society they will need to feel that the hate crime laws designed to protect them are being supported by the government and by the CPS, who ultimately prosecute cases in court. In this study, Muslim individuals’ confidence in both the government and the CPS along with their approval of hate crime laws were measured using three scales and included the following representative items: ‘I believe the CPS is effective in prosecuting Islamophobic hate crimes’ (CPS effectiveness), ‘To what extent do you agree that hate crimes should be treated as a special category of crime?’ (special category), and ‘I think the government could do more to help eradicate Islamophobic hate crimes and incidents’ (Govt. could do more). Looking at the average responses in relation to the scales’ midpoints in Figure 7.7, Muslim participants, in general, did not think the CPS is effective at prosecuting Islamophobic hate crimes. They also agreed that hate crimes should be a special category of crime and thought that the government should be doing more to combat Islamophobic hate crimes. Again, illustrating the community impacts of Islamophobic hate crimes, these attitudes were significantly stronger for people who knew of at least one victim of an Islamophobic hate crime (Indirect) and for people who had also been a victim themselves (Direct & indirect). The finding that participants agree that hate crimes should be considered a special category of crime is important for two reasons. First, it highlights that victimised communities are seemingly aware of the greater impacts caused by these types of crimes, especially if they have had personal experiences with Islamophobic hate crimes. Second, as hate crimes are already a special category of crime (e.g. Crime and Disorder Act, 1998 (c.37); Criminal Justice Act, 2003 (c.44)), it suggests that the UK is right in legislating specifically against anti-religious hate crimes. Nevertheless, Muslim participants also indicated that more is needed to be done for them to feel confident that the State is taking this type of crime seriously. In this regard, it is worth noting that more specific recognition of ‘Islamophobic hate crime’ (as against more broadly anti-religious hate crime) may be helpful. The Metropolitan Police Service, for example, now collects data specifically for ‘Islamophobic hate crime’ separating these

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2 1 CPS effectiveness

Special category of crime

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Figure 7.7 The impacts of Islamophobic hate crimes on attitudes towards the CPS and government. * Denotes a significant difference from the No experience group at p < 0.05.

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out from other religious-based aggravated offences.10 Further separation of categories within the legislation may be something that policy makers may wish to consult further on. Such a governmental response is but one measure that could help to communicate to Muslim communities that Islamophobia is considered a serious societal concern. Of course, much greater social, political and structural work is required before confidence levels in ‘the system’ will improve drastically.

Conclusions This chapter has provided new quantitative evidence regarding the community impacts of Islamophobic hate crimes. Our findings show that Muslim community members continue to encounter pervasive forms of hostility in the UK. This hostility takes many forms including verbal abuse, online abuse, and physical attacks. Such widespread victimisation provides further evidence that Islamophobia has become a normalised part of everyday life for many Muslim people in the UK. The consequences of Islamophobia and Islamophobic hate crime can be far-reaching. Direct victims are likely to experience heightened emotional responses, exhibit potentially harmful behaviours, and feel further alienated from society and the institutions tasked with protecting them. Crucially, we have shown that these detrimental effects extend to other Muslim community members. Simply knowing of other Muslim people who have experienced Islamophobic hate crimes was found to be associated with increases in perceptions of threat, together with increased feelings of anxiety and anger. This indirect experience of victimisation also made individuals feel wary of socialising and heightened their concerns for individual and community safety and security. Consequently, confidence in the police, the CPS and the government in tackling Islamophobic hate crime was low. The only potentially positive finding from the study was that victimised Muslim participants seemed to find (or at least seek out) comfort and support in their Muslim identities and Muslim organisations. Nevertheless, even these findings point to a society in which Muslim individuals feel more secure by becoming more insular and, as a result, moving further away from other identities and groups in British society. While our findings are necessarily limited by characteristics of the sample, survey items, and analysis strategy, they still provide cogent evidence of the considerable impacts that hate crimes have on Muslim communities. To combat these widespread effects, the criminal justice system must continue to find new ways to address the consequences of Islamophobic hate crime if it is to address the huge gap that exists between policy aspiration and the low confidence levels that Muslim people have in Britain’s statutory agencies. Fundamental to this task is a clearer and more nuanced understanding of the community-wide emotional impacts that Islamophobic hate crimes have on individuals. At a legislative level, both the courts and other justice practitioners must recognise that hate incidents traumatise not only individual victims but entire communities of people who are bound by a group identity. However, community impacts are far from homogeneous in their effects. Practitioners must grasp the wide-ranging consequences on emotionality and behaviours. In this regard, it is important to appreciate that that incidents are likely to invoke certain key emotions (e.g. anger and anxiety) as well as specific key behavioural responses (e.g. avoidance and pro-action). It is only by understanding how these emotions and behavioural responses are directly and indirectly linked to hate crime that practitioners will be better equipped to explore new ways of addressing the consequences of Islamophobia on Muslim people.

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Notes   1 We use the broad term Islamophobic hate crime to incorporate crimes and non-crime incidents that are perceived to be motivated by a prejudice towards Islam and/or Muslim people.   2 To access the survey, participants were asked, ‘Do you feel culturally, religiously, and/or socially Muslim?’ If they answered yes, they proceeded to the survey. If they answered no, they were directed to the end of the survey.   3 Hate incidents are incidents that are perceived to be hate-motivated but do not meet the threshold of a crime. As incidents and crimes are likely to have similar impacts, and for the sake of brevity, we shall include incidents within the term of ‘hate crime’ for the remainder of the chapter.   4 As verbal and online abuse are more common than physical hate crimes, the response options were larger for the abuse items (i.e. 1–3 versus 1–2) and so the results are shown in two different figures.   5 We also asked about knowledge of attacks against their own mosque and mosques in the UK. 85% of participants knew of at least one UK mosque which had been attacked in the past 3 years and, of those who went to mosque, 58% of their own mosques had been attacked.   6 We chose to split the sample on experiences with assaults as participants were asked to respond to an Islamophobic assault (described later).   7 There were only 7 participants (2%) who had been a victim but did not know another victim. These participants were included in the Direct & indirect group.   8 Although these measures were intentions rather than actual behaviours, research has shown that intentions are a good predictor and proxy for actual behaviours (Armitage and Conner 2001).   9 Individual items (not scales) were used to assess perceptions of the police and specific police procedures and policies 10 See MPAC Hate Crime Dash Board at www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/mayors-office-policing-andcrime-mopac/data-and-research/crime%20/hate-crime-dashboard.

References Abu-Ras, W. M. and Suarez, Z. E. 2009. Muslim men and women’s perception of discrimination, hate crimes, and PTSD symptoms post September 11. Traumatology, 15, 48–63. Armitage, C. J. and Conner, M. 2001. Efficacy of the theory of planned behaviour: a meta-analytic review. British Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 471–499. Awan, I. 2013. Let’s prevent extremism by engaging communities, not by isolating them. Retrieved 5 January 2018 from www.publicspirit.org.uk/lets-prevent-extremism-by-engaging-communities-not-isolating-them. Awan, I. and Zempi, I. 2015. ‘I will blow your face off’ – virtual and physical world anti-Muslim hate crime. British Journal of Criminology, 57, 362–380. Bell, J. G. and Perry, B. 2015. Outside looking in: the community impacts of anti-lesbian, gay, and bisexual hate crime. Journal of Homosexuality, 62, 98–120. Chakraborti, N. and Garland, J. 2015. Hate crime: impact, causes and responses. London: Sage Publications. College of Policing 2014. Hate crime operational guidance. London: College of Policing. Corcoran, H., Lader, D. and Smith, K. 2015. Hate Crime, England and Wales 2014/2015. London: Home Office. Corcoran, H. and Smith, K. 2016. Hate Crime, England and Wales 2015/2016. Statistical Bulletin 11/16 ed. London: Home Office. Craig, K. M. 1999. Retaliation, fear, or rage: an investigation of African American and White reactions to racist hate crimes. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 14, 138–151. Dick, S. 2008. Homophobic hate crime: the Gay British Survey. London: Stonewall. Gianassi, P. and Hall, N. 2016. Policing hate crime: transferable strategies for improving service provision to victims and communities internationally. In J. Schweppe and M. A. Walters (eds), The globalization of hate: internationalizing hate crime? (pp. 190–212). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hall, N. 2013. Hate crime. London: Routledge. Hassan, R. 2006. Globalisation’s challenge to the Islamic Ummah. Asian Journal of Social Science, 34, 311–323. Herek, G. M., Cogan, J. C. and Gillis, J. R. 2002. Victim experiences of hate crimes based on sexual orientation. Journal of Social Issues, 58, 319–339. Herek, G. M., Gillis, J. R. and Cogan, J. C. 1999. Psychological sequelae of hate-crime victimization among lesbian, gay and bisexual adults. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 67, 945–951.

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Home Office. 2013. An overview of hate crime in England and Wales. London: Office for National Statistics and Ministry of Justice, UK Government. Hossain, I. 2012. Muslim ummah, international organisations, and human development in the MMCs. In S. Hasan (ed.), The Muslim world in the 21st century (pp. 299–318). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. Iganski, P. 2001. Hate crimes hurt more. American Behavioral Scientist, 45, 626–638. Littler, M. and Feldman, M. 2015. Tell MAMA reporting 2014/2015: annual monitoring, cumulative extremism, and policy implications. Middlesbrough: Teesside University. Mackie, D. M., Maitner, A. T. and Smith, E. R. (eds). 2009. Intergroup emotions theory. New York: Psychology Press. McDevitt, J., et al. 2001. Consequences for victims: a comparison of bias and non-bias motivated assaults. American Behavioral Scientist, 45, 697–713. Noelle, M. 2002. The ripple effect of the Matthew Shephard murder: impact on the assumptive worlds of members of the targeted group. American Behavioral Scientist, 46, 27–50. Paterson, J. L., Brown, R., and Walters, M. A. 2018. Feeling for and as a group member: understanding LGBT victimisation via group-based empathy and intergroup emotions. British Journal of Social Psychology. DOI: 10.1111/bjso.12269 Paterson, J., Walters, M. A., Brown, R. and Fearn, H. 2018. The Sussex Hate Crime Project. Retrieved 5 January 2018 from www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=sussex-hate-crime-projectreport.pdf&site=430.Perry, B. 2014. Gendered Islamophobia: hate crime against Muslim women. Social Identities, 20, 74–89. Perry, B. and Alvi, S. 2012. ‘We are all vulnerable’: the ‘in terrorem’ effects of hate crimes. International Review of Victimology, 18, 57–71. Poynting, S. and Perry, B. 2007. Climates of hate: media and state inspired victimisation of Muslims in Canada and Australia since 9/11. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 19, 151–171. Tajfel, H. and Turner, J. C. 1986. The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In S. Worchel and W. G. Austin (eds), Psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 7–24). Chicago, IL: Nelson Hall. Turner, J. C., et al. 1987. Rediscovering the social group: a self-categorization theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Wachtel, P. L. 2012. Race in the mind of America: breaking the vicious circle between Blacks and Whites. New York: Routledge. Walters, M. A. 2014. Hate crime and restorative justice: exploring causes, repairing harms. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, M. L. and Burnap, P. 2015. Cyberhate on social media in the aftermath of Woolwich: a case study in computational criminology and big data. British Journal of Criminology, 55, 1–28. Zempi, I. and Chakraborti, N. 2014. Islamophobia, victimisation and the veil. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Part II

Patterns of Islamophobia through a European lens

8 A historical perspective Secularism, ‘white backlash’ and Islamophobia in France Olivier Esteves

Introduction By first reaching back to a time when the tensions between Islam and public space were completely outside the radar of public debate in France, this chapter sets out to analyse the way constructions of Islamophobia have been shaped by potent historical forces, some of which are global in nature whereas others would seem to be more specifically French. In particular, I want to place the focus on the crystallisation of anti-Muslim hostility in the 1980s, which was to culminate with the first headscarf affair in 1989. A concatenation of events throughout the decade does indicate that the 1980s were indeed a crucial turning point as far as discourses on French secularism and the place of Islam in France are concerned. And it is probably no coincidence that the 1980s were also the decade when the Front National enjoyed its first electoral breakthroughs, in municipal (1983), European (1984) as well as legislative elections (1986). In studying the 1980s, I want to devote some time to the figure of sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad (1933–1998), probably the best sociologist on Algerian immigration and a man whose writings on secularism, however few they were, shed insight on French controversies around laïcité. Lastly in this chapter, misconceptions of secularism in France will be analysed through the lens of perceived preferential treatment among a growing number of non-Muslim French. These perceptions, which become ever more deeply seated as the litany of terrorist attacks or threats have shown little sign of ending, certainly suggest parallels with ‘White Backlash’ discourses and what I term ‘resentful autochthony’ perceptions in countries like the US, Britain, Canada or the Netherlands, despite a seeming French exceptionalism frequently seen as stemming from its assimilationist, Republican ideal of integration. I will here contend that misunderstood as it has been in France, secularism takes its place alongside backlash narratives against affirmative action in the US, reasonable accommodation in Canada or multicultural policies in Britain.

Piecemeal forms of reasonable accommodations (1960s–1980s): immigrant workers, Islam and public space At a time when Algeria had just obtained its independence (1962) after a protracted and traumatic war, some French companies with large numbers of Muslim immigrant workers were 99

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devising ways of accommodating the cultural, linguistic as well as religious specificities of North African workers. This was no mere humanitarian or multicultural concern: in an effort to be competitive in an increasingly global market, these businesses thought there was sound economic rationale in making what few efforts were needed to keep portions of their workforce secure in their identities, all the better to increase turnout and generate productive companionship across ethnic boundaries. The efforts discussed here came from private companies, who were all the more prepared to make certain adjustments to shifts, working hours and factory premises as their Muslim workforce made up a substantial proportion of the whole. The assumption was also that if these workers perpetuated their cultural religiosity this was no problem in itself: it was still believed, until the mid-1970s, that the ‘travailleurs immigrés’ would return home after a few years, and there was no focus back then on the need for ‘integration’. In the 1960s, there is ample evidence of company-driven efforts to let workers practice their religion. Back then, French secularism (laïcité) was almost never invoked in public debate. Only a few examples of these initiatives will suffice. In the north of France, where coal mines had attracted large swathes of mostly Moroccan workers to exploit the last pits left open before bankruptcy and deindustrialisation, some companies issued clearly worded messages to foremen dealing with Arab and Muslim miners or coal-mine directors more broadly. In a 1962 managerial note to the coal-mine directors of the northern towns of Lens-Liévin, Hénin-Liétard,1 Valenciennes, Douai and Oignies, one finds instructive recommendations ‘relative to Moroccan workers’, promoting a well-intentioned rapprochement with them, and guaranteeing them the possibility of four religious holidays a year (notably for Eid and Ashoura).2 The same document suggested that mine directors and foremen (known as porions) should have a smattering of Arabic to avoid misunderstandings, and that general seminars be held for them to gain knowledge of Moroccan immigrants’ sociology, religion, culture and geography (Centre Historique Minier undated). Another 1967 work note for foremen at Hénin-Liétard, now a Front National stronghold, is more explicit about religion: in bold type and large letters, it issues the warning that ‘in particular it ought not to be forgotten that the North-African worker has:’, which is then followed by sections titled ‘a name’, ‘a country and some origins’, ‘a language’, ‘a religion’, ‘a family’, ‘a culture’. Under the ‘religion’ section, one reads: ‘Religion is sacred to the Muslim. Do not make fun of it and whilst you may discuss it, only do so with workers that you know well, for the Muslim likes to be left alone about his religion and cannot bear any outside interference with it. As a consequence, avoid making any reference to alcohol, to eating pork, to Ramadan, and you will only be better appreciated’ (Centre Historique Minier undated). From the 1960s to the 1980s, there is likewise ample archival evidence of managerial and municipal prayer room facilities being granted to Muslims, in a sort of piecemeal, reasonable accommodation kind of approach. Never was this apprehended as a breach of French secularism. In Avion, for instance, Muslim miners had been praying in the local school until, in 1985, some urban renovation projects made it necessary for them to find another place, which was duly debated with the town hall (ANT, undated). In nearby Anniches, Muslim workers locally did not manage to strike out a deal with the mayor, and failed to obtain a public building to conduct prayers, but the local authority refusal had absolutely nothing to do with secularism. In Raismes-Sabatier, the coal-pit administration facilitated the use of buildings for prayer purposes, but held the ‘Muslim community’ accountable for the maintenance of the said building (ibid.). With hindsight, the above reasonable accommodations of Muslim customs among immigrant workers invite the following comments. First, religion was seen as a non-problematic identity pillar within a gamut of intertwined identities, be they cultural, ethnic, linguistic, whereas today Islam is routinely conjured up as the one issue that affects ‘Maghrébins’ by 100

A historical perspective

trammelling their integration. Second, instead of calling upon Muslims to fit in a secularised French space and cast off some of their religiosity in the process, non-Muslim co-workers and foremen were invited to take a tolerant approach towards Muslims and learn about them in the process, mostly by not offending their internalised sense of religiosity. Third, secularism (laïcité) was never invoked until the late 1980s. Fourth, current debates on abstract principles (laïcité, identité nationale, ‘vivre ensemble’) were totally absent from what were in fact pragmatic concerns about the efficient running of now ailing sectors of the economy, from the carmaking to the steel and coal industries. Fifth, instead of generalised suspicion fuelled by many international developments (from the Iranian hostage crisis (1979) to 9/11, from the Algerian civil war (1992–1998) to the atrocities of Daesh and Jihadi terrorist attacks across Europe), there prevailed a well-intentioned paternalistic atmosphere, in tune with the dominant paternalistic attitude taken by corporate interests since the industrial revolution (Noiriel 2001).

The 1980s, a decade of turning points The ‘Ayatollah of Aulnay-sous-Bois’ and the Shia-influenced strikes of 1982–1983: the advent of socialist-governed France under François Mitterrand started off in promising ways for immigrants and ethnic minorities. For instance, the 5th Republic’s first ever left-wing president granted citizenship to some one thousand immigrants, satisfying a grievance that immigrant associations had been airing for some years (Noiriel 2008). Then the year 1983 was marked by the ‘Marche pour l’égalité et contre le racisme’, which French national memory was to digest into a community-centered ‘Marche des Beurs’ with the active aid of the newspaper Libération (Hajjat 2013). The period also coincided with violent strikes in car-making plants to the north and west of Paris, which saw the massive involvement of mostly Morrocan workers. Interestingly, a mere three years after the Iranian revolution, the strikers were depicted by the right-wing press (Le Figaro) as well as by high-profile ministers as being influenced or even controlled by international fundamentalist networks. In 1982-3, the strikers articulated specific demands, only a few of which were faith-based. The most important ones were about a pay-rise, the possibility of getting a fifth week paid holiday, as had been introduced by Mitterrand in 1981, as well as respect by management. Specific demands were made about getting 30-minute breaks for Ramadan and the opening of prayer rooms. For the strikers, the labour dispute was about dignity and respect. The majority trade-union, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), was well aware of the religious nature of certain claims and fully agreed with them. Muslim workers made up a majority in some plants, and to the CGT, the issue revolved around multicultural tolerance and the respect of these workers’ dignity. The religious dimension in the dispute was wildly played up by some politicians, media and corporate representatives. Innocuous invocations of ‘God’, which are part of mainstream vocabulary in Arabic, were reported as outlandish, if not ominous. At a general meeting in Aulnaysous-Bois, one trade-union immigrant representative declared: ‘Citroën workers, I want to thank you for being here today. In the name of God we all hope our demands will be satisfied, our dignity respected. In the name of God we all gather here today, we are all brothers in this strike’ (Gay 2015, p. 114). And for the first time, Muslims were caught on camera praying in car parks since no prayer room was made available to them at Aulnay. This was seen as a encroachment on public space, far removed from the practices that had hitherto prevailed, when Islam was limited to the inside of the work premises, or was literally practiced underground (hence the French phrase ‘Islam des caves’, i.e. ‘Cellar Islam’). Some socialist ministers wasted no time in casting doubt about the strikers’ political bona fides. Minister of the Interior Gaston Deferre talked about their alleged ‘shia influence’ a few 101

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years after Khomeini had toppled the Iranian Shah. Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy lamented the fact that those ‘immigrant workers [were] agitated by political and religious whose frames of reference are disconnected from French reality and society’. Labour Minister Jean Auroux went repeatedly further in his declarations. In the newspaper L’Alsace, he said: ‘It is fairly obvious that there has been a religious, fundamentalist dimension to the unrest we have witnessed, which makes this not strictly a trade-union question’. In a national public radio (France-Inter) interview on 10 February 1983, he also declared: ‘When some workers pledge allegiance on the Quran, this stops being a trade-union question. A certain number of people out there are bent on disrupting the social and political stability of our country because we simply represent too many things in terms of liberty and pluralism’ (Gay 2015, p. 124). A corporate report echoed this sentiment: ‘These Muslims aligned towards Mecca on the parking lot, reciting prayers amidst religious slogans shouted out in Arabic into the CGT loudspeakers: these are scenes which inevitably remind one of Khomeini-ruled Iran’ (ibid., p. 119). The immigrant strikes of 1982–1983 are particularly important in that they signalled the eruption of Islam among immigrants as a social and political problem, thereby juxtaposing the inchoate ‘Muslim question’ to the old ‘immigrant question’. Scholars of Islam or of immigration in France have justifiably insisted on the crucial dimension of this historical turning-point (Gay 2015; Noiriel 2008; Deltombe 2005; Hajjat and Mohamed 2013). Media coverage and political declarations by ministers and the conservative opposition symbolically excluded these immigrant workers from trade-union and labour history in France, by repeatedly overplaying the importance of faith-based demands among strikers and underlining the wholly incongruous nature of the movement by traditional French labour standards. As Vincent Gay has cogently argued, the alleged permeability of the workers to fundamentalist discourses implacably entrenched the bounds between a national, French ‘us’ and a foreign, Muslim ‘them’, outside the bounds of trade-union disputes, irrespective of the nation’s industrial interest, playing in the hands of international networks plotting against France (Gay 2015, p. 123). In hindsight, this was a classic smear tactic in a labour dispute and, of course, also a way for the socialist party to deflect attention away from their controversial 1983 neo-liberal u-turn (Cusset 2008). What is edifying is that Islam was in the present case, and probably for the first time in the contemporary period, perceived as a disqualifying element per se. Although French secularism was never overtly invoked in 1982–1983, the seeds of suspicion towards a failed kind of integration due to the sheer weight of Islam among certain social out-groups had been sown. These seeds would bear fruit a half decade later, when this time around not the first generation but the second generation would come to the centre of public attention around education, a domain of public policy which more naturally lends itself to discussions of laïcité. A mere look into the Le Monde digital archives suffices to bear this out. While from 1960 to 1990, a thirty-year time span, ‘laïcité’ was mentioned 1,874 times, the figure skyrocketed to 3,957 times through a twenty-year time span from 1990 to 2010. More interestingly, prior to 1989 ‘laïcité’ was simply never harnessed to expose Muslims’ deficient citizenship. For instance, Front National’s leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose party never had any time for ‘laïcité’ until these last few years, argued in a February 1988 speech that it was high time some ‘laïcité’ were injected back into the ministry of education, but it was only a scathing attack against those whom he saw as ‘Marxist zealots’ (calotins marxistes) wielding undue influence in the corridors of power (Le Monde, 15 February 1988). By the end of the decade then, times were ripe for secularism to be attached to the Muslim presence in France, an association which has been constant now since 1989, the year of the first headscarf affair that erupted in a high school in Creil, to the north of Paris. That year coincided 102

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with, first, The Satanic Verses scandal (which, albeit a British issue originally – see Esteves 2011 – had major international repercussions); second, with the end of the Cold War; and third, with the largely acclaimed bicentenary of the French Revolution. The concomitance of these events invited numerous and facile editorials pitting the heritage of the French Enlightenment against the obscurantist schemes of Iran-driven fundamentalists who were using young school girls as stooges. All of this is well-known now and has been thoroughly researched, but it does bear repeating that to make sense of the 1989 timing is key, because it ushered in a new era in the French public debate on integration and Islam. For instance, Bowen reminds us that immediately prior to 1989, the few high-school students wearing hijabs were often deliberately placed up front on classroom photos in an effort to project an image of diversity and multicultural tolerance (Bowen 2008). By 1989 though, these girls had become political pawns in a game that went way beyond them and made them educational pariahs. In a hugely publicised collective editorial, some media-savvy intellectuals issued the following warning: ‘Only the future will tell whether the year of the revolution’s bicentenary will have coincided with a Munich of Republican schools’3 (Le Nouvel Observateur, 2 November 1989).4 Ever hungry for bombastic similes, other, less high-profile intellectuals responded in a smaller circulation publication by warning against the perils of a ‘Vichy de l’intégration’ (Politis, 9 November 1989),5 whatever that might actually mean. The focus on Islam as inherently straining integration and as being an objective challenge to national identity has been more or less constant ever since. Abdelmalek Sayad’s intellectual trajectory in the 1980s: himself a scholar of Algerian immigration to France who is probably overlooked in Anglophone academia, Abdelmalek Sayad was an active participant in 1980s integration and education debates. His personal archives, which were donated by his wife Rebecca upon his death to the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration before their eventual transfer to the national archives at Pierrefitte to the north of Paris, contain some 150 boxes which have precious little to say about secularism. This in itself is a telling sign that for Sayad crucial debates on immigration and integration of Muslim workers and their offspring simply lay elsewhere. In 2014, Le Seuil published a collection of previously unreleased essays and interviews dealing with the education of immigrant education. In a 240-page volume, laïcité is mentioned only twice in passing and once very reluctantly, but what the great scholar has to say is very illuminating to make sense of the 1980s evolution in French public debate. Having resigned from the Jacques Berque commission on the education of immigrant children, Sayad was asked his opinion on the teaching of immigrant languages to children, a multicultural practice of sorts, which hailed back to the 1920s and to the wave of Polish immigrants. Sayad vilified what he saw as a ghettoised form of education which only further reinforced racial stereotypes regarding ghettoised children who were taught ghetto languages, instead of English, German or Spanish (Sayad 2014, p. 119). Teachers of Portuguese, Polish, Arabic were paid by Portugal, Poland and Algeria and were all subaltern staff within schools. More to the point, Sayad was scathing about the teaching of Arabic, which raised serious secular issues according to him: ‘To teach Arabic the way Arabic is being taught today is to teach the Muslim religion in the proselyte sense of the word. It is an actual violation of secularism, which would be considered as a violation if the Christian religion were in question here’ (ibid., p. 120). What is crucial to comprehend here is that when Sayad made this declaration, at a time when the French government and the right wing press cast repeated slurs on allegedly ‘Shia’ strikes, nobody really raised an eyelid, and the opportunity to suggest that Islam in itself raised an issue of laïcité was simply never taken. The times, despite the emergence of Front National and the growing focus on Islam, did not seem to be ripe for that. Five years later, when the first headscarf scandal had made numerous headlines and caused a national furore, Sayad was asked to give his opinion on the controversy. This he evidently balked at doing: 103

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Since one must talk about this issue, it is neither secularism nor religion which is at stake here . . . Just look at the current situation. Without the fall of Iran’s Shah, without Lebanon, without a ‘party of God’, how do you think schools would have treated such a clothing incongruity? Schools would have treated that as a question of civility . . . French civility has been brought within the schools, in terms of school behaviour: in class, your head is not covered, if you arrive with a beret, you put it in the locker room, if you arrive with a hat, you put it in the locker room . . . Without all of that, it is only in this way that the school should have dealt with this issue . . . Today, it is the French schooling system which is relinquishing its own secularism. (Sayad 2014, pp. 201–202) In this particular case, and as opposed to 1984, Sayad did not envisage this issue as connected at all with secularism, and appeared to have been one among a few to wholly dismiss secularism from the debate. Bourdieu’s friend was therefore twice against the tide over a five-year period, and his personal stances do shed light on the sea-change that had been occurring in French public debate on the issue of Islam, secularism and public space in such a limited time-span.

French secularism instrumentalised: a ‘White backlash’ of sorts, and some Muslim responses to it Evidently, secularism in France is a slippery term, which generates various kinds of controversies, although for more than a decade there has been a growing consensus on the need for a ‘firm line’ on secularism and Islam. In broad terms, the major opposition is between secularism as being a legal principle inscribed into a 1905 legislation which guarantees freedom of religion and separates Church and State, as opposed to secularism as being (wrongly) defined as the need to make sure that religion does not encroach upon public space, which itself confuses secularism with secularisation, a sociological and historical evolution at play in Western countries (including the United States) (Baubérot 2012, pp. 63–84; Baubérot 2015, p. 135; Goldman 2012, pp. 112–140). The interpretation of the 1905 legislation as advocating freedom from religion (today Islam, yesterday the Catholic Church) rather than freedom of religion often rests on (deliberate?) confusions over the meanings of ‘public space’, a phrase which was completely absent from the 1905 law (Baubérot 2015, pp. 157–158). Just as interestingly, whereas the architects and advocates of the 1905 separation of Church and State were left wing figures (Jean Jaurès, Aristide Briand, Ferdinand Buisson, Francis de Pressencé) today many zealots of a stigmatising, ethnocentric, anti-Muslim laïcité are to be found among the right, and even the far-right (Baubérot 2012, pp. 29–43). But more interestingly even has been the fact that for at least ten years, ‘secularism’ as a largely anti-Muslim narrative and storytelling has been permeating public debate all across the political spectrum, from the hard left (Lutte Ouvrière, Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste) to the Front National on the radical right (Tevanian 2006). This is largely conducive to a culturalisation of citizenship whereby Muslims are seen as deficient, deviant, out of bounds (Duyvendak et al. 2016). This tension is at play in surveys about how French public opinion makes sense of secularism. For instance, the Commission Nationale Consultative des Droits de l’Homme (CNCDH), in its yearly report of 2015, carried out a study of some 1020 respondents on the meaning of secularism, which is quite germane since it helps to apprehend the extent to which backlash narratives on laïcité have percolated. Among the respondents, 54% associated secularism with ‘living together’ in society (vivre-ensemble, a constantly used phrase in a post-2015 France ever more segregated across social and ethnic lines); 50% associated it with the banning of religious 104

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displays in public places and 47% associated it with the separation of Church and State.6 It is obvious from this that secularism is a hotly contested term, and that ‘laïcité narrative’ and ‘laïcité juridique’ vye for domination in a fierce interpretative ‘bataille des idées’ that the French seem to have a liking for. The survey was carried out after the Charlie Hebdo attacks but before the 13 November attacks. French secularism as meaning forced secularisation increasingly suffuses French people’s thinking. This is reflected in individuals’ as well as institutions’ appreciation of secularism. One social worker in the French banlieues states quite bluntly that ‘Faith is about what you are deep inside, it’s about private space. To wear a kippa, a headscarf, an ‘I Love Jesus’ t-shirt, all of that is a personal choice. I don’t want to see that in the streets’ (Bouzar 2011, p. 69). In November 2006, a Ministry of the Interior circular advised regional agents on the following point: ‘Secularism [laïcité] proscribes any ostentatious demonstration of religious beliefs and posits as an absolute rule that religious affiliation is a strictly private matter that cannot encroach upon public life’ (ibid., p. 70). Amiraux goes so far as to posit that this is a form of ‘gossip politics’ which wields influence upon the law-making process, as was shown during the parliamentary debates on the banning of the burqa leading to the 2011 legislation (Amiraux 2012). Some debates and decisions following the high-profile Baby Loup crèche, as is also highlighted by Timothy Peace in his chapter, demonstrate this in no uncertain terms: for a growing number of members of parliament, secularism simply means freedom from religion in public space rather than freedom of religion as guaranteed by a State separated from faith groups. Such a damaging notional ambivalence can only have detrimental effects on Muslims. Indeed, when they articulate claims that are compatible with legislative secularism, they are met with hostility by those who argue that these claims are repugnant to secularism as meaning secularisation, and that therefore such demands can only come from a cumbersome, vociferous ‘community’ that strikes out for nothing short of preferential treatment. It is precisely in this sense that French Islamophobic discourses utilising secularism are part of the White backlash narratives illustrating hostility towards ‘immigrants’ and ethnic minorities often reified into some vague ‘they’. Admittedly, ‘White backlash’ is something of a misnomer since the great bulk of Muslims in France do not regard themselves as non-whites; ‘resentful autochthony’ is just as problematic since so many Muslims were born and bred in France, therefore are just as autochthonous as non-Muslims, although their religious affiliation is often racialised into a foreign identity, as general talk of ‘Maghrébins’ or ‘Arabe’ clearly indicates. But what is meant here is that misunderstood secularism as a form of ‘White backlash’ manifests itself as a deeply entrenched perception of preferential treatment of Muslims by authorities, be they local or national. ‘They’ are perceived as getting extra-funding for mosques, ‘they’ get to parade with their Muslim attire in the streets, ‘their’ wives wear headscarves with arrogant looks, ‘they’ occupy the streets with their Friday prayers. The perception of preferential treatment enjoyed by Muslims in France takes a form which is both more recent and quite distinct, say, from comparable perceptions in the UK. Indeed, in the UK (one is tempted to say ‘England’), Race Relations Acts have powerfully boosted perceptions of preferential treatment, as is testified by the anti-immigration campaign by Enoch Powell just as the 1968 Race Relations Bill was being debated in the Commons. These perceptions revolve around the indignant sense that ‘they get laws for themselves’, or ‘they get laws to protect them, whereas we get nothing’, ‘we might go to jail if we don’t want them, and the law protects them, not us’, etc. In France, since the 1990s and more particular since the 2000s, there has been a growing sense not that ‘they get laws for themselves’ but rather that ‘if they don’t abide by the law (secularism) they are not punished’. This is another perception of preferential treatment, 105

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which owes its existence to contested definitions of secularism. Implacably, as controversies on secularism pile up, Muslims demanding the respect of the 1905 legislation are construed as vociferous Others wanting to be more equal than others. Perceptions of preferential treatment of Muslims erupt in numerous culture wars, often local in nature. For instance, in southern Corsica in 2015, an elementary school teacher in the town of Prunelli-di-Fiumorbu, Annelyse Hallard, a woman with much teaching experience and much grassroots knowledge of Corsica, organised, in anticipation of the yearend school party, the singing of ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon in five languages either taught in the school or spoken in the community: French, English, Corsican, Spanish, Arabic. Little did she anticipate the furore this would bring about. Repeatedly threatened, the teachers had to recoil and even made use of their ‘right of withdrawal’ (a labour legislation allowing one not to go to work when one’s physical integrity is menaced) in mid-June 2015. This shows that in France (and here in Corsica), Islamophobia bears a strong anti-Arab racism dimension, itself a leftover of French colonial history. But it is also possible to construe this event as a ‘White backlash’ incident of sorts, for this Corsican incident unleashed indignant feelings that ethnic minorities get undue recognition because their culture is dismissed as both lower and threatening, feelings that are intensified by decreasing public resources and an ethnic-linguistic dimension specific to Corsican nationalism writhing under French Republicanism. Annelyse Hallard recalls hearing a barrage of wild rumours, all of the White backlash type: ‘we don’t even get breaded fish fillet at the canteen’, ‘our daughter will have to wear a veil at school’, ‘we’ll again have to struggle to get a nativity scene in the Town Hall’, ‘we can’t even wear uniforms at the base’,7 ‘we’re tired of halal food at the year-end party’, all of which is utterly fallacious, all of which is often fed by sheer ignorance. The substantial Moroccan community in the town was silent during the whole incident, or merely said ‘we never asked anything’ (Annelyse Hallard, interview, 5 December 2015). It is probably reassuring for the Metropolitan French to dismiss such bouts of nativism as Corsican anomalies. The truth is that such incidents could have happened elsewhere on the French territory. What these indicate is that, like the Burkini controversies in the summer of 2016, Muslims are often apprehended as killjoys, those who prevent holiday-makers from enjoying Riviera beaches, those who plot against the introduction of nativity scenes in town halls in a context where the refrain ‘they banned Christmas’ has become internationalised through social networks (Esteves 2017), those who, as in Corsica, are seen as disrupting the normally peaceful atmosphere of yearend school parties, those who wear veils at school outings in an obvious breach of ‘narrative secularism’. It is in this way that Muslims are seen as imperiling national cohesiveness and ‘vivre ensemble’, preventing the deserving ‘autochthonous’ from reaping the fruits of a liberal society where ‘pursuit of happiness’ should be untrammeled. This theft of enjoyment pattern is inherently linked to national identity: as Žižek has argued, enjoyment itself is seen as a condition for the Nation to exist (Žižek 1993, p. 201). Lastly, a few French Muslim responses to this backlash may be discussed. First of all, some draw a distinction between this backlash free-for-all and the calmer responses of institutions. Hassane Oufkir, head teacher at Lycée Averroès (Lille), one of the very few Muslim faithschools to be state-financed, makes the reassuring point that ‘Public authorities don’t have the same reaction as the public at large on secularism; civil servants read the texts and apply the texts. There’s clearly a legal arsenal that protects us’ (Esteves 2015). But many are those who bitterly lament a recurrent confusion: that because secularism implies the neutrality of the state, it is incumbent upon the agents of the state to be religiously neutral religious in their jobs, not upon the individuals who actually use these services. In other words, while it is only fair that a teacher in a school must not wear a hijab, it does not behove a pupil to do the 106

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same. This perception of double standards among Muslims is damaging for national and social cohesiveness, as is also highlighted by Baubérot, who describes this interpretative evolution as a ‘fallacious shift’ (Baubérot 2015, p. 148). Some express their irritation by brandishing historical symbols and hurling them back at what they see as laïcité-obsessed France. Mohamed Meniri, president of the association running the Bondy mosque (Seine Saint-Denis) states that ‘clearly, when hearing all this, Jean Jaurès must be turning in his grave’ (ibid.). Jean Jaurès was one of the four key architects of the 1905 legislation on separation of Church and State. Faced with fellow-countrymen who seem to have forgotten their history or learnt it in an odd way, Mr. Meniri mobilises this same history in an effort to show that ‘nous (aussi) sommes la nation’, to quote a recent essay by Marwan Muhammad from Collectif Contre l’Islamophobie en France (Muhammad 2017). Others who are just as irked reverse the ‘fundamentalist’ stigmata which is often attached to practising Muslims, by exposing what is extreme about contemporary constructions of laïcité: Maged Osmane, the main imam at Montreuil’s great mosque in Seine-Saint-Denis, posits that ‘[Secularism] has become like a civil extremist religion, losing sight of what it is primarily about’ (ibid.). As Mayanthi Fernando has shown in her ethnographic fieldwork, many of these Muslims simply seek a ‘right to indifference . . . on terms that do not require assimilation into majority religious, cultural, and racial norms’ (Fernando 2014, p. 79). But, as opposed to this, a growing number of non-Muslim French people criticise what they see as the Muslims’ advocacy of a ‘right to difference’, itself a demand for preferential treatment incompatible with their appreciation of a secular Republic.

Conclusion Despite a seeming French exceptionalism which has a lot to do with specifically French perceptions of secularism, much of the hostility against Muslims rests on international issues that have reverberated across Europe and US, from the Iranian revolution of 1979 to the Satanic Verses scandal ten years later, from 9/11 to the atrocities of Daesh exported to France since 2015. Lexical choices reflect this: high-profile fundamentalists in the late 1980s and early 1990s were routinely described as ‘ayatollahs’, and the mainstream media and politicians lost no time in exposing the ‘integrist’ women wearing ‘chadors’ on French public spaces, itself a word which is associated with Iran. I myself remember a great, knowledgeable high-school teacher of history in the northern French town of Tourcoing who, exactly as the Creil headscarf erupted, would refer to ‘chador’-wearing schoolgirls. The other point to be made in conclusion is that the French national fabric weakened by hostility against Muslims rests to some extent on a sense of double historical betrayal. Some Muslims feel betrayed by the French Left that instrumentalised their 1980s movement striking out against racism and for equality, the same as they were to feel betrayed one generation later by an anti-globalisation movement that had little time for Muslims, as Timothy Peace has shown in his comparative monograph (Peace 2015). This French literature generally refers to as ‘des occasions manquées’ (missed chances) (Masclet 2003). Muslims are also feeling betrayed by authorities whose view of secularism cannot guarantee a ‘right to indifference’ in a country where secularism is usually defined as meaning that religion has no place in public space. Across the ethnic divide, some non-Muslim French, from corporate interests to public authorities, feel they have been betrayed by a section of the population who, instead of jettisoning the religion of their parents and embracing what they construe as a modernity which is a sina qua non of integration, have learnt to individually rediscover an Islam which they regard as incompatible with contemporary life in the West. That feeling seems to apply more to Muslim women and girls than to Muslim men. All of this, again, is no French exception, and finds echoes all across Europe. 107

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Acknowledgement I would like to warmly thank Timothy Peace for reading a first version of this chapter.

Notes 1 In 1971, the town changed its name into Hénin-Beaumont. 2 This was together with the national Moroccan Independence Day, on 18 November. 3 The reference here is to the guilty appeasement policies adopted by France and Britain at the time of the Munich agreement of 1938. 4 Signatories to this wake-up call around laïcité were Elizabeth Badinter, Régis Debray, Alain Finkielkraut, Elizabeth de Fontenay and Catherine Kintzler. 5 In this second case, signatories were Joëlle Brunerie-Kaufmann, Harlem Désir, René Dumont, Gilles Perrault and Alain Touraine. 6 Multiple answers were possible. 7 The Corsican town is 20 miles away from the major air-base of Solenzara, in this largely agricultural area.

References ANT. Undated. Archives Nationales du Monde du Travail (Roubaix, Nord), collection Charbonnages de France, ref. 2004 001 (272). Amiraux, V. 2012. Visibilité, transparence et commérage: de quelques conditions de possibilités de l’islamophobie . . . et de la citoyenneté. Sociologie, 5(1), 81–95. Baubérot, J. 2012. La Laïcité falsifiée. Paris: La Découverte. Baubérot, J. 2015. Les Sept laïcités françaises. Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. Bouzar, D. L. 2011. La République ou la burqa, les services publics face à l’islam manipulé. Paris: Albin Michel. Bowen, J. 2008. Why The French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, The State and Public Space. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Centre Historique Minier (town of Lewarde, Nord), collection HL 1383 (C2100), file titled ‘Administration du personnel, ouvriers nord-africains, notes diverses (1947–1970)’. Commission Nationale Consultative des Droits de l’Homme. 2015. La Lutte contre le racisme, l’antisémitisme, la xénophobie. Paris: La Documentation française. Cusset, F. 2008. La Décennie: le grand cauchemar des années 1980. Paris: La Découverte. Deltombe, T. 2005. L’islam imaginaire: la construction médiatique de l’islamophobie en France 1975–2005. Paris: La Découverte. Duyvendak, J. W., Geschiere, P, Tonkens, E. 2016. The Culturalization of Citizenship: Belonging and Polarization in a Globalizing World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Esteves, O. 2011. De l’invisibilité à l’islamophobie: les musulmans britanniques (1945–2010). Paris: Presses de Sciences-Po. Esteves, O. 2015. Islamophobia in France: National Report 2015. In E. Bayraklı and F. Hafez (eds), European Islamophobia Report 2015. Istanbul: SETA. Esteves, O. 2017. Le Pen, les crèches et le centre commercial de Pawtucket. Libération, 6 April. Fernando, M. 2014. The Republic Unsettled: Muslim French and the Contradictions of Secularism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Gay, V. 2015. Grèves saintes ou grèves ouvrières ? Le ‘problème musulman’ dans les conflits de l’automobile. Genèses, 98(1), 110–130. Goldman, H. 2012. Le Rejet français de l’islam: Une Souffrance républicaine. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Hajat, A. 2013. La Marche pour l’égalité et contre le racisme. Paris: Editions Amsterdam. Hajjat, A. and Mohamed, M. 2013. Islamophobie: Comment les élites françaises fabriquent le ‘problème musulman’. Paris: La Découverte. Laacher, S. 2005. L’Islam des nouveaux musulmans en terre d’immigration. Mouvements, 38(2), 50–59. Lamont, M. 2000. The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class and Immigration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

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Masclet, O. 2003. La Gauche et les cités: un rendez-vous manqué. Paris: La Dispute. Muhammad, M. 2017. Nous (aussi) sommes la Nation: Pourquoi il faut lutter contre l’islamophobie. Paris: La Découverte. Noiriel, G. 2001. Etat, nation et immigration, vers une histoire du pouvoir. Paris: Gallimard/Folio. Noiriel, G. 2008. Immigration, antisémitisme et racisme en France, discours publics, humiliations privées (19–20ème siècles). Paris: Fayard. Peace, T. 2015. European Social Movement and Muslim Activism: Another World is Possible but with Whom? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sayad, A. 2014. L’Ecole et les enfants de l’immigration. Paris: Le Seuil. Tevanian, P. 2005. Le Voile médiatique. Paris: Raisons d’Agir. Žižek, S. 1993. Tarrying With the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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9 Islamophobia and the Left in France Timothy Peace

Introduction As many of the chapters in this volume demonstrate, it is the political right that is at the forefront of propagating Islamophobia, whether this emanates from political parties, the media or various public figures. In this regard, France is no different to other countries in Europe. Anti-Muslim sentiment, which was preceded by a long history of anti-Arab racism, is propagated by various political actors, not least the ever popular extreme-right Rassemblement National (formerly known as the Front National – FN) whose leader Marine Le Pen reached the second round of the 2017 French Presidential Election. Islamophobia has a long history in France, despite the use of such a word to describe anti-Muslim racism only coming into popular use in the 21st century. A fear of Islam and Muslims has been constructed by the French media since the 1970s with key events including the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the first ‘headscarf affair’ of 1989, and, of course, the events of 11 September 2001 and the subsequent ‘war on terror’ (Deltombe 2005). In the most comprehensive overview of Islamophobia in France, Abdellali Hajjat and Marwan Mohammed (2013) make the case that the French elites have been responsible for creating a ‘Muslim problem’, which has obvious links to the colonial past. There is, in fact, a wealth of research on how the colonial experience has informed attitudes to racialized minorities in France and, in particular, how the difficult decolonising experience of Algeria informs this collective memory (Silverman 1992; Macmaster 1996; Silverstein 2004). To this we can now add a more specific (and burgeoning) literature on the experiences of Muslims in France, which takes into account the particular struggles and discrimination they face as a result of Islamophobia (Bowen 2010; Fernando 2014; Fredette 2014; Peace 2015; Beaman 2017; Wolfreys 2018).1 The push back against Islamophobia in Europe is often championed by progressive forces and the political left in an extension of the anti-racist struggles of the past. Yet, when observing the landscape of Islamophobia in France, one of the most interesting facets that sets it apart from many of its European neighbours is the fact that anti-Muslim attitudes are not routinely denounced and fought by those on the Left. The French anti-racist movement is divided on this issue (Peace 2012) and some who would identify as being on the Left are even responsible for the enmity directed at Muslims in the public debate.2 This has the result of adding to a climate of suspicion which also has a knock-on effect in terms of discrimination and even physical acts of violence. According to 110

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the figures from the Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France (CCIF), Islamophobia in France reached a peak in 2015 with 905 recorded acts, ranging from instances of discrimination (588 reported incidents) to physical violence (55 incidents).3 In its annual reports, the CCIF regularly points the blame at French politicians of all ideological stripes for encouraging ‘political Islamophobia’ and at the French government in particular for its inability to condemn this. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this organisation itself has come in for heavy criticism for its attempt to link political discourse with acts of discrimination and abuse. The issue of Islamophobia is politically sensitive and the object of fierce discussion. Yet while it is clear that there exists a problem regarding Islamophobia in France, it is ‘far too easy to say the French are just racist or just Islamophobic – easy and inaccurate’ (Fredette 2014, p. 15). It therefore needs to be made clear at the outset that this chapter is not arguing that the French Left is inherently ‘racist’ or that it can be compared to the extreme right. One must be careful to avoid over simplistic characterisations of what is actually a very complicated issue. Indeed, my reading of this situation is that the issue of Islamophobia, and all the controversies related to Muslims in France, is an issue that divides the Left. Nevertheless, it is a particularity of the French public debate concerning Islam and Muslims, that the most virulent criticisms, stereotypes and alarmist polemics are often proffered by those who would consider themselves as progressives. This is something which may surprise the outside observer when trying to understand the often uneasy relationship between France and its Muslims. This chapter, then, seeks to illuminate why this is the case and provide some examples of what has previously been described as ‘progressive’ (IRR 2011) or ‘liberal’ (Mondon and Winter 2017) forms of Islamophobia. It also discusses why there is an aversion to even using the term ‘Islamophobia’ on the French Left, a related issue which also sets France apart from many of the other countries discussed in this volume, rendering any analysis of this phenomenon even more complicated.

The importance of secularism and gender equality The starting point for any discussion of Islamophobia and the Left in France is the issue of laïcité – the French version of state secularism. As Olivier Roy (2007) has pointed out, laïcité in France can refer to at least three separate principles – legal, philosophical and political. It is important to remember that secularism in France was, first and foremost, a value that was defended by the French left. This is because it regards the 1905 law on the separation of the Churches and State as a hard fought political victory against the Catholic Church. The Left, therefore, has always seen itself as both the guardian and standard bearer of laïcité. Ever since the first ‘headscarf affair’ in 1989 (see Esteves’ chapter in this volume), virtually every public discussion in France regarding its Muslim citizens relates back to the principle of laïcité, with those on the Left being its most ardent defenders. As John Bowen (2007, p. 242) demonstrates in his account of why the French National Assembly decided to pass a law in 2004 against religious symbols in schools, in the post 9/11 climate, ‘politicians on the left and the right sought to outdo each other in defending laïcité’. There is a political consensus around the need to safeguard laïcité in the face of what is seen as a threat from Muslims and/or Islam. In such a context, it has become de rigueur for politicians in France to demonstrate a firm line when it comes to secularism, particularly if they are on the Left. Yet what does secularism entail in the French context? Although politicians love putting forward their secular credentials, there is a significant debate in French society about what laïcité means in practice. Indeed, even among the members of France’s official watchdog on secularism, the Observatoire de la laïcité, there 111

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is no consensus and this organisation has been torn apart due to infighting over these issues.4 For many, secularism has become a convenient ‘tool for putting Muslims under scrutiny and questioning their allegiance to the values of the Republic’ (Wolfreys 2018, p. 1), particularly given the fact that most public controversies involving laïcité relate to Islam rather than other faiths. By visibly showing outward signs of religiosity, for example by wearing a headscarf, Muslims are accused of defiling the supposed neutrality of public space. This interpretation explicitly positions itself as a French exception that is in opposition to ‘anglo-saxon models’ (Baubérot 2013) and is tied to a wider development in French politics – the triumph of neorepublicanism as the dominant political language which can be found on the Left and the Right (Chabal 2015). Jean Baubérot (2015) has observed how this dominant interpretation of secularism in France is essentially a right-wing reading that has now been accepted across the political spectrum.5 It plays directly on the public’s fears related to their identity, which is supposedly threatened by Islam (hence his term laïcité identitaire). This shift was already evident during the second mandate of Jacques Chirac who set up the Stasi Commission to reflect upon the application of the principle of laïcité (which recommended a law on religious symbols that was eventually passed in 2004). It was then reinforced during the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy who first created a new ministry of immigration and integration which included the term ‘national identity’ in the title. This was followed by the launch of a nationwide debate about national identity in 2009 (which could simply be read as a debate on Islam). Quasi-governmental bodies such as the High Council for Integration (HCI) were directly responsible for these shifts in policy, but such organisations are in no way politically neutral (Beaugé and Hajjat 2014). The HCI, whose composition from 2002 until its dissolution in 2012 was clearly in favour of a more restrictive definition of laïcité, was tasked with coming up with advice and propositions relating to ‘the expression of religion in public space’ (HCI 2010). Although these initiatives took place under a ring-wing government, this new definition of laïcité was shared (or at least not opposed) by the majority of the Left. Some refer to this development as the nouvelle laïcité because the desire to apply the principle of ‘neutrality’ has now been extended to the whole of French society and not just places like government buildings. In their study of this phenomenon, Stéphanie Hennette Vauchez and Vincent Valentin (2014) illustrate this move with reference to the legal wrangle over the Baby Loup crèche which started in 2008 and ended in 2014. In this emblematic legal case, a woman wearing the veil was dismissed from her post for defiling the principles of laïcité and neutrality despite being employed in a private crèche. Key figures across the political spectrum supported the position of the employer and there is no discernible left–right split over such issues. In addition to the principle of secularism, it is the defence of gender equality (l’égalite hommes-femmes) which is regularly invoked by those on the Left in order to defend measures against Muslims that would, in many contexts, be described as discriminatory. Ever since the first headscarf affair of 1989, one of the most recurrent objections from those on the Left to any form of veiling is that this constitutes a visual symbol of inequality between the sexes. Because this inequality is what the feminist movement has been fighting since its inception, the issue of the headscarf is seen as a key battle regarding female emancipation and against male patriarchy. Such discussions have traversed feminist movements across the world but have had a particular resonance in France where the view of the headscarf as an instrument of oppression (and male domination) is generally shared across the feminist movement and the political left more widely. This despite the existence of research since the 1990s which reveals the multiple reasons why Muslim women in the West may decide to veil and the dissenting voices of feminists such as Christine Delphy. At the heart of these discussions lays the key question of female agency. In the French debate, and particularly on the Left, the routine assumption is 112

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that the headscarf is imposed upon women by a patriarchal order (father, brother, husband). Such women must be defended but their own viewpoint is often lost in such discussions, hence the need to publish accounts, which allow veiled Muslim women to actually ‘speak’ (Chouder et al. 2008). Part of the reason why the debates concerning the wearing of the headscarf in schools were so passionate relates to the belief by many on the French left in the emancipatory role of state schools in forming its citizens. Because school children are minors, they need to be protected from the potentially corrosive influence of organised religion and be allowed to develop an independent conscience.6 In this view, the state ‘through its educational system, can and should emancipate Muslim girls from patriarchal, religious oppression’ (Laborde 2008, p. 125). Yet this emancipation is not simply about social and political equality but also concerns the issue of female sexuality. The female body and its visibility in public space is part of the subtext of many of the calls to ban the wearing of headscarves: Until their ideological confrontation with Islam, many French feminists saw the sexual exhibitionism of their society – particularly as it applied to women – as demeaning to women because it reduced them to a sexed body. But in the heat of the headscarf controversy, those concerns were set aside and equality became synonymous with sexual emancipation, which in turn was equated with the visibility of the female body. (Scott 2007, p. 156) These arguments were raised both during the headscarf controversy of 2003–2004 and again when the issue of the full-face veil was debated in 2009–2010. At both conjunctures, gender equality and laïcité were mobilised in union as the key arguments in favour of the resulting laws which banned religious symbols in schools (2004) and face coverings in public (2010), with both laws clearly aimed at Muslims living in France. These principles are often conflated as part of a singular ideal, something that was made clear in the Stasi Commission’s report, which claimed that ‘laïcité cannot be conceived without a direct link to the principle of equality between the sexes’ (Commission Stasi 2003, p. 52). While opposition to the headscarf or a particular attachment to secular or feminist principles cannot be described as Islamophobic per se, it is important to recognise that such arguments are often mobilised to single out Muslims for criticism and highlight the problematic difference that they pose to the French ‘republican norm’. In addition to the feminist arguments put forward by the Left in favour of bans on veiling, we can also add a ‘theological-political’ argument that viewed such laws as a bulwark against rising religious fundamentalism (Lévy 2010). In the section that follows, more concrete examples will be given of how those on the Left have been responsible for, or at least complicit in, the propagation of hostility towards Muslims in French society.

The link between Islamophobia and the Left Discussing a link between the political left and hostility towards Muslims is controversial and, in many ways, reflects similar debates and disagreements regarding antisemitism and the Left (Peace 2009). There is a deep suspicion that accusations of Islamophobia made against elements of the Left are either an attempt to silence criticism of religion or merely a tool for discrediting political rivals, even within the same political family. This is certainly noticeable when looking at how those on the British radical left criticise their French counterparts. Alex Callinicos (2008, p. 154) is one such critic, stating that ‘to say that Islamophobia has penetrated the very heart of the progressive forces in France is simply to state a fact’. Indeed, 113

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a striking division emerged between British and French left-wing activists active in the alterglobalisation movement concerning attitudes to Muslims activists and in particular over the issue of the headscarf (Peace 2015). Although such debates on a European level were often framed in terms of ‘national’ characteristics, with French left-wingers routinely castigated as racists and islamophobes, they obscured the reality of a split within the French left over these issues. Debates and arguments within the feminist movement (Scott 2007; Delphy 2015) and the anti-racist movement (Peace 2012; Gordon 2017) have been particularly hard fought. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the dominant view on the French left, understood as including those affiliated to the centre-left Parti Socialiste (PS) as well as the more radical parties including ex-communists and Trotskyists, is a rather restrictive interpretation of Muslim civil liberties, particularly in terms of how Muslim women should dress. There is a broad consensus across the political spectrum that both the 2004 law banning religious symbols in state schools and the 2010 law banning face coverings are necessary and must be maintained. What is more, in both cases these laws were championed by key figures on the Left. The Stasi commission, for example, included the philosopher Régis Debray, former government minister Michel Delebarre and the sociologist Alain Touraine. Only a handful of left-wing members of parliament voted against the subsequent law of 15 March 2004 (including just two representatives of the PS).7 The parliamentary commission that led to the 2010 law was led by André Gerin of the Parti Communiste Francais (PCF) and this also received wide support during the parliamentary vote.8 One might argue that such laws are not necessarily evidence of anti-Muslim prejudice. In some cases, however, hostility towards Islam and/or Muslims is much more explicit when coming from the Left, even if it is justified in the language of progressive politics. One of the repeated criticisms about Islamophobia as a term is that the phenomenon being discussed is not concerned with Islam as a religion but rather Muslims and how they dress, behave etc. In the French case, and perhaps due to the attitude vis à vis religion as a whole in the country, it is indeed Islam as a religion which is often the point of concern and in particular whether it can be ‘tamed’ or even ‘made French’ (Bowen 2010). The number of books published which reference Islam de France is testament to this.9 The public debate on the issue of whether Islam can be reformed and/or integrated into French society is often led by those on the Left: In this campaign, conducted primarily by figures on the Left, two lines can be discerned: the pessimists, for whom there is no secular Islam, and the optimists, who, on the contrary, want to foster, or even bring into being, an Islam that would be liberal, secular, and truly French. Many politicians on the Left have adopted this stance. (Roy 2007, p. 3) In this book, originally published in 2005, two left-wing politicians that Olivier Roy mentions explicitly are Didier Motchane and Manuel Valls. The latter was, at that time, a rising star in the PS and had begun to make his mark as an intransigent defender of French secularism in a book entitled La laïcité en face (Valls 2005). It is, however, interesting to note that back in June 2003, in an interview with Le Monde, Manuel Valls had expressed concerns about the idea of introducing a law to ban headscarves: Banning religious attire [in schools] by introducing a law – and let’s be frank here, we’re basically talking about Islamic dress – will merely turn the headscarf into a symbol. Such intransigence will only serve to further divide Muslims in France from the rest of the population and push some of them into sending their children to Muslim schools.10 114

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Valls’ conversion into the poster boy for a rigid interpretation of secularism who now advocates for the banning of the headscarf in universities demonstrates how it can be politically expedient to associate oneself with a hardline attitude. This is partly a reaction to how the FN has been able to shape the public debate on issues pertaining to immigration, integration and Islam.11 The move by social democratic politicians (and their parties) towards the right on ‘cultural issues’ in an attempt to win back voters tempted by extreme right parties is a phenomenon that we can observe across Europe (Bale et al. 2010). Valls has since gone on to hold senior positions in the French government, most notably Minister of the Interior (2012–2014) and Prime Minister (2014–2016). During both mandates he made statements, which were highly contentious regarding Muslims and Islam. During 2016, he referred to both the headscarf and the ‘burkini’ as embodying the ‘enslavement of women’ and often spoke of the need to combat ‘Islamist totalitarianism’ and defend ‘our culture and security’. Although the latter statement could be interpreted as mere opposition to terrorism, it is clear that such pronouncements are not only aimed at those promoting extremism. During one political meeting in the summer of 2016, Valls claimed that ‘Marianne, the symbol of the Republic, is bare breasted, because she nourishes the people! She is not veiled because she is free, that’s the Republic!’.12 Such statements are naturally calculated to have the biggest political impact, the latter coming in the wake of the terrorist attack in Nice, the subsequent ‘burkini’ scandal and a long-expected declaration to run for the presidency. In early 2017, Valls was subsequently questioned on national TV by the anti-racist activist Attika Trabelsi on Islamophobia and in particular the abuse and discrimination that women such as her faced for wearing a headscarf. In his response he blamed women for wearing the veil as a political statement [étendard politique] and the influence of Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood. He also remarked that ‘we can see what is happening in our society and within French Islam and we want to help them to emancipate themselves from these trends that push people towards radicalisation’.13 Such a declaration is a telling example of how the issue of Muslim women wearing headscarves can be extrapolated and connected with issues of wider ‘Muslim problems’ in society including that of violent extremism. Manuel Valls was one of the most well-known politicians associated with the PS who voiced such a tough approach with regards to France’s Muslim citizens.14 Yet his statements seem rather tame when compared with some of his colleagues. Laurence Rossignol, Minister of Families, Children and Women’s Rights in Valls’ government (and in that of his successor Bernard Cazeneuve), received a wave of publicity when in March 2016 she compared Muslim women who veiled with ‘American negroes who were in favour of slavery’ – comments that were naturally picked up in the international media.15 In the same interview, she also accused such women of being activists for political Islam, a familiar device for justifying opposition to any form of veiling and the fight against Islamophobia (Muhammad 2017). Indeed, the enemy is not so much the symbolism of the headscarf, but more what it might represent in terms of a more extreme version of Islam that is supposedly gaining ground. The idea of the ‘Republic in danger’ due to complacency regarding political Islam has a strong rallying potential which has united many journalists and politicians alike. The former PS regional councillor Céline Pina has become a figurehead for the battle against ‘Islamism’ and the supposed weakness of the French political class faced with its propagation. She reserves particular invective for those on the Left she deems as ‘useful idiots’ who ‘under the cover of defending a cause which in itself is beyond reproach: freedom of religion, tolerance, respect for minorities etc, end up facilitating the destabilisation of society through Islamism’ (Pina 2016, p. 5). These are the so-called Islamo-gauchistes [Islamoleftists], a term first coined by the academic Pierre-André Taguieff and subsequently popularized by journalists such as Claude Askolovitch and Caroline Fourest, that has now become part of the political vocabulary in France, being regularly used to attack and insult political opponents.16 115

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The debate on the Left – Islamo-leftists versus Islamophobes? The ‘Muslim problem’ is an issue that divides the Left in France and the headscarf had been the main point of contention in relation to domestic politics. The spate of terrorist attacks that the country has faced since 2012 has opened up a new set of fractures as people attempt to make sense of this violence and its relation to Muslims and Islam in France.17 In this period, which has also seen a rise in anti-Muslim attacks, there has been a rich debate among left-wing intellectuals prompted in particular by the attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and the subsequent ‘Je suis Charlie’ movement. One response was the Republican Spring (Printemps républicain) launched in March 2016. This initiative by a group of neo-republican intellectuals and politicians had the aim of finding a ‘third way between the racism directed at Muslims and the denial by the Islamo-gauchistes regarding the rise of radical Islamism’ according to the philosopher and feminist Elisabeth Badinter, one of its most prominent signatories and a veteran of such quarrels regarding Islam.18 The author of this manifesto, the Professor of Political Science Laurent Bouvet, expressed the right to criticise ‘political Islamism’ without being accused of Islamophobia and claimed that French secularism is being attacked by those (on the Left) who have been brainwashed by a postcolonial ideology that sees Muslims as the new ‘Wretched of the Earth’ who refuse to see the continuity between Islamism and jihadism.19 Bouvet’s arguments have been described as ‘the expression of a rightward drift on the mainstream left’ (Wolfreys 2018, p. 13) and others see the formation of the Republican Spring as the culmination of a tendency on the Left to produce a discourse about identity that has hints of racism (Muhammad 2017). Those involved in the Republican Spring, on the other hand, regard the use of the term Islamophobia as a dangerous way to shut down any criticism of religion. Somewhat ironically, they have actively campaigned to shut down debate whenever the issue of Islamophobia is discussed on university campuses, often under the pretext that those taking part are ‘Islamists’.20 As Nathan Lean’s contribution in this volume demonstrates, there is a long-standing debate regarding the desirability of the term ‘Islamophobia’. In France, this hesitancy to employ the term has been particularly entrenched, notably on the Left. Caroline Fourest has been one of its most virulent critics, famously claiming that ‘Islamophobia’ had been invented by Iranian Mullahs after the 1979 revolution in order to shame those women who refused to veil themselves.21 The debate on the Left over the use of the term was particularly heated in the period 2003–2004. This was prompted by Claude Imbert, founder of the neo-republican magazine Le Point, who declared in a televised interview that he was an ‘Islamophobe’, considering this a badge of honour. This created a division (even amongst those journalists working for the magazine) between those who criticised Imbert for making such a statement and those who supported it as an act of free speech. One of the first organisations to condemn these comments was the anti-racist group MRAP (Movement against Racism and for Friendship among Peoples) which had, at that time, begun to specifically campaign against Islamophobia. However, by early 2004 there was a clear division in the anti-racist movement in France regarding the use of this term, and much internal discussion within MRAP itself. Indeed, the organisation nearly tore itself apart over this issue, which has still not been resolved. The post-‘Je suis Charlie’ tension in France has had the effect of merely rekindling old battles between the various anti-racist movements. The president of the LICRA (International League against Racism and Antisemitism), Alain Jakubowicz, has made a personal crusade of attacking the term Islamophobia, creating in the process a Twitter storm in November 2016 with the hashtag #idiotsutiles (‘useful idiots’).22 A similar sentiment had already been proffered by Elisabeth Badinter earlier in the year who stated that the term Islamophobia was merely a way to disqualify someone who disagrees with a strict interpretation of secularism. In a radio interview with France Inter she remarked that: 116

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One needs to be firm and not be afraid of being accused of being an Islamophobe, which for the last few years has been a way of shutting down debate, stopping people from speaking and creating a climate of suscpision around laïcité. When people realise that it is simply a weapon to used against laïcité they will stop being afraid and speak out.23 In the same vein, Pascal Bruckner – another public intellectual, has repeatedly denounced the use of the word Islamophobia.24 In his latest offering entitled ‘An imaginary racism’ (Bruckner 2017) he attacks those on the Left for accepting the term Islamophobia and wallowing in a form of post-colonial guilt. The title itself is indicative of the denial that Muslims in France are facing a specific form of racism. While many of these battles on the Left take place among media pundits and ‘public intellectuals’ the battle lines are also to be found in academia. Houda Asal (2014) has expertly traced the history of the concept of Islamophobia and its use (or avoidance) in the Francophone academic literature. She explains how a number of French academics have openly attacked this term.25 Asal’s review of the literature reveals how ‘Islamophobia’ as a concept has only recently received a measure of legitimacy as a sociological object of study in France. The ideological battle relating to its use occasionally spills out of the ivory towers and into the pages of the mainstream press, most notably the left-wing daily Libération. This goes beyond simple debates about concepts and is instead used to settle scores and undermine the reputations of rivals, most evident in the spat between France’s two best known scholars of political Islam, Gilles Kepel and Olivier Roy (Peace 2016). In one scathing op-ed, Kepel lambasts those academics who ‘employ meaningless buzzwords such as radicalisation and Islamophobia that obscure the research done by the social sciences’.26 Yet despite such strong worded statements, the term is becoming more mainstream in research on racism and xenophobia. The decision of the French watchdog on racism, the CNCDH (National Consultative Commission on Human Rights) to adopt this term in 2014 can be seen as something of a turning point in the debate. Until this point, the commission had always avoided the use of ‘Islamophobia’ in favour of more neutral terms like ‘anti-Muslim acts’ when discussing verbal or physical abuse experienced by Muslims (or those perceived as such).27 In the introduction to its annual report for the year 2013 there is a careful explanation (totalling 9 pages) as to why Islamophobia is now considered as a legitimate term for the organisation, despite the continuing existence of dissenting voices (CNCDH 2014). Reading this justification gives a sense of the deep divide regarding the use of the term ‘Islamophobia’ that exists among scholars despite the trend moving towards its acceptance. Some on the Left feel that Muslims are being unfairly targeted due to a hysteria surrounding Islam in France. Three recent books illustrate this trend. The first in this vein is Nos mals-aimés (‘Our unloved ones’) by Claude Askolovitch (2013), which offers an account of a France that ‘doesn’t want its Muslims’. This book serves as a sort of mea culpa given the content of his previous journalism and was the direct result of him deciding to leave his job working for the magazine Le Point after a dispute regarding its (mostly unfavourable) coverage of Islam. Askolovitch reveals a shift in attitudes amongst some on the Left, including himself, who feel that things have gone too far in terms of rampant Islamophobia. Another journalist who has spent much time defending Muslims and denouncing Islamophobia (and as a result been heavily criticised for doing so) is Edwy Plenel. The former chief editor of Le Monde, he is one of the founders of the online news outlet Mediapart which offers a critical counterpoint to the more mainstream publications on issues connected to Muslims and Islam. In his book For the Muslims (Plenel 2016) he draws parallels between contemporary Islamophobia and historical antisemitism and compares the situation of Muslims in France to that of the Jews in the past, claiming that 117

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both groups have been essentialised, caricatured and defamed.28 Regularly accused of being an Islamo-gauchiste, Plenel was himself the victim of a caricature by Charlie Hebdo in November 2017 which made national headlines. This controversy was, for some, a good example of a war on the Left when it comes to issues related to Muslims, Islam and secularism.29 The third book to mention is the demographer Emmanuel Todd’s Who is Charlie? (Todd 2015) written in the wake of the ‘Je suis Charlie’ movement. This deliberately provocative assessment of the nation’s response to the tragedy in 2015 rightly points to the demonization of Islam in France despite being a ‘grossly simplistic interpretation of the huge demonstrations of 11 January’ (Esteves 2016, p. 170).30 There is a clear divide between two distinct voices on the Left. One which seems itself as the defenders of Republican and secular values (that their opponents denigrate as Islamophobes and reactionaries), while the other seeks to defend Muslims from the climate of fear in France (the so-called Islamo-gauchistes). The latter pleads for a recognition of the objective existence of Islamophobia that is sometimes even promoted, even if inadvertently, by the former.

Conclusion What this chapter illustrates is that the French left has a difficult relationship with Islamophobia both as a social phenomenon and as a concept. There is a rich debate which, over time, indicates an increased acceptance of the devastating effects of anti-Muslim racism in society, whatever name we want to call it. Rather than resorting to facile conclusions about the link between the French left’s obsession with laïcité and the promotion of Islamophobia, I think it helps if we acknowledge that certain interpretations of secularism in the French context have contributed, whether directly or indirectly, to increased suspicions with respect to Muslims living in France. When the Left is guilty of Islamophobic discourse, it is often founded on the values of anticlericalism as well as the fight against ‘Islamism’ and sexism; rather than the blunt racism of the right (Hajjat and Mohammed 2013). What seems to bother many on the Left is that a Muslim identity still exists despite the promises of a French universalism that was supposed to do away with difference. There is ‘a segment of the secular Left that in the 1980s defended the rights of immigrants against the Front National [that] is indignant that the children of those immigrants display a Muslim identity’ (Roy 2007, p. 4). This attitude does have the potential to develop into outright anti-Muslim racism through blogs and websites such as Riposte laïque.31 Yet this is not the norm and not everyone who defends French secularism is a racist, despite ‘a good deal of scholarship that has cast French neo-republicanism – and especially laïcité – as an intolerable attack on liberal pluralism, or simply as a thinly veiled form of neo-colonial domination targeted at Muslims’ (Chabal 2015, p. 30). The point is that the zeal for defending French secularism, even if pursued with progressive intent, often leads to de facto discrimination, usually against women wearing the headscarf. When such women are instructed to remove offending items of fabric from their heads because they are deemed to violate the ‘neutrality’ of the secular public space, it can only have the effect of exasperating an existing sentiment of feeling unwelcome and excluded.32 The debate on the Left is constantly evolving and the term ‘Islamophobia’ is becoming increasingly mainstream as evidenced by its invocation by former President François Hollande in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks (Esteves 2016). The primary race to become the Socialist Party’s presidential candidate in early 2017 was further evidence of how things might be changing. The winning candidate, Benoît Hamon, denounced the fact that laïcité had ‘become a convenient pretext for a virulent and offensive against Islam’.33 Since the elections of June 2017, there are members of France’s National Assembly who openly denounce Islamophobia such as 118

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Danièle Obono and Clémentine Autain representing the radical left party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed). Similarly, Marlène Schiappa the current Secretary of State in charge of Equality between Women and Men has also stated that banning women wearing headscarves on school trips amounts to nothing less than Islamophobia.34 Despite these signs, there are still those that need convincing that it is necessary to fight against Islamophobia and that using the term does not mean you are siding with extremists or opposing the critique of religion. Some are attempting to make this argument (Muhammad 2017) but the task is not facilitated when much of the Left prefers to argue about who has the correct interpretation of secularism rather than agreeing on the need to fight anti-Muslim prejudice. In this sense, the French case is indeed an exception but in order to move forward, a genuine debate needs to take place, without one side being silenced. This seems to be a long way off, but there are at least signs of change.

Acknowledgement I would like to thank both Abdellali Hajjat and Olivier Esteves for their comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. All translations from French are my own.

Notes 1 To this list we could, of course, also add the vast academic production in French on the topic. 2 This is not to say that France is unique when it comes to Islamophobia emanating from the Left. Nadia Fadil (2010) has documented a similar phenomenon in neighbouring Belgium and here I follow her use of ‘the Left’ as a descriptive rather than a normative category to refer to politicians, intellectuals and journalists who would describe themselves as being on the Left and/or ‘progressive’. 3 To view these statistics see the website of the CCIF www.islamophobie.net/rapport-2017/ 4 See ‘A quoi sert l’Observatoire de la laïcité?’ Le Monde, 23 January 2016. This division opposes on the one side the President Jean-Louis Bianco, regularly accused of complacency or laxism, and members such as Patrick Kessel who runs the Comité Laicité République which adheres to a very restrictive interpretation of secularism (see below). 5 This interpretation owes much to a report authored by right-wing politician François Baroin in 2003 entitled Pour une nouvelle laïcité (Hajjat and Mohammed 2013). 6 It should be noted that initially the idea of banning headscarves in universities was rejected because the students who study there are adults and therefore the guiding role of the state is not an imperative. More recently though, the possibility of extending such a ban to universities has been discussed (for example during the 2017 presidential election campaign). 7 In total there were 494 votes in favour of the law, 36 against and 31 abstentions. See www.assembleenationale.fr/12/scrutins/jo0436.asp. 8 It should be noted that many politicians on the Left decided to not take part with a total of only 336 members of the National Assembly actually casting a vote. www.assemblee-nationale.fr/13/scrutins/ jo0595.asp It has been suggested that Gerin’s use of Islamophobia was an electoral gamble based on the shift to the right of working class voters in former Communist strongholds such as Vénissieux (Quartiers XXI 2015). 9 In 2005 a government initiative was launched entitled the Fondation des œuvres de l’islam de France (FOIF) which was designed, amongst other things, to resolve the issue of how mosques and Islamic associations were financed without relying on funds from abroad. This idea was revived in 2016 in the wake of the terrorist attacks that had rocked France. See ‘La Fondation des œuvres de l’islam relancée après dix ans d’échecs’, Le Monde, 2 August 2016 10 See ‘On ne fera pas respecter les valeurs de la nation et de la République par l’interdiction’, Le Monde, 18 June 2003. 11 While opposition to Islam has become a unifying political issue across the European extreme right, it is worth remembering that in the French case this has been a key theme since the Algerian War (Mammone 2015). 12 See ‘French PM suggests naked breasts represent France better than a headscarf ’, The Guardian, 30 August 2016. 119

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13 This debate took place on the television programme L’Emission Politique (France 2) on 5 January 2017. A video of the exchange can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow0QeLF3hbQ. 14 This strategy nearly cost him his seat in parliament as during the elections in June 2017 his constituency was hotly contested and he was only re-elected with the slimmest of margins (139 votes). His opponent in the second round, Farida Amrani, even launched an appeal with the Conseil constitutionnel.Valls quit the PS at the end of that month in order to sit with Macron’s parliamentary majority. He subsequently decided to quit French politics (and give up his seat in parliament) in 2018 in order to run for Mayor of Barcelona. 15 See ‘French women’s rights minister accused of racism over term “negro”’, The Guardian, 30 March 2016. 1 6 See ‘Peut-on accuser les députés FI d’“islamo-gauchisme” comme l’a fait Valls?’, Libération, 5 October 2017. In this article Caroline Fourest describes the Islamo-gauchistes as those who ‘in the name of a communitarian (communautariste) and Americanised vision of identity, fight against universalist feminism and secularism’. 17 In March 2012 Mohammed Merah killed three soldiers as well as three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in Toulouse and Montauban. Incidents also occurred in 2013 and 2014 before the wave of attacks that has hit the country since 2015 culminating in the November 2015 Paris attacks that left 130 people dead. 18 See ‘Des personnalités de gauche se mobilisent pour la laïcité’, Le Monde, 18 March 2016. Despite her wealth, Badinter is usually considered to be part of the Left due to her commitment to feminism and through association with her husband, Robert Badinter, who was a prominent member of the PS (and former Minister of Justice). As with many of the public figures described in this chapter, this characterisation of her as part of the Left would be disputed by many. 19 Ibid. 20 During the writing of this chapter, a national controversy erupted over the hosting of an academic conference on Islamophobia in Lyon.This was subsequently cancelled after a campaign on social media led by personalities connected with the Republican Spring. See ‘L’annulation d’un colloque universitaire sur l’islamophobie fait débat à Lyon’, Le Monde, 11 October 2017. 21 See ‘Ne pas confondre islamophobes et laïcs’, Libération, 17 November 2003. The theory about the Iranian Mullahs has since been debunked, most notably by Hajjat and Mohammed (2013). 22 See ‘Pour le président de la Licra, l’islamophobie est une “imposture”’, ‘L’Express, 8 November 2016, www.lexpress.fr/actualite/societe/pour-le-president-de-la-licra-l-islamophobie-est-une-imposture_ 1848241.html. See also the response of Claude Askolovitch in defence of the term Islamophobia ‘Que la Licra refuse que l’on parle d’“islamophobie”, c’est une catastrophe’, Slate, 7 November 2016, www. slate.fr/story/128057/licra-refuse-islamophobie-catastrophe. 23 An excerpt from this interview can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7eNeiV6GOs. 24 Bruckner is considered as one of the Nouveaux philosophes – public intellectuals who, although previously leftists, later abandoned Marxism and advocated a critique of totalitarianism, in particular Communism. They came to prominence in the 1970s but by the mid-1980s ‘their methodology, approach and conclusions had been severely criticised by other philosopers as simplistic, reductive and facile’ (Chabal 2015, p. 44). 25 This includes Pierre-André Taguieff. In fact, the title of the first academic book in French dealing with Islamophobia, La Nouvelle Islamophobie (Geisser 2003) was a response to Taguieff ’s book on antisemitism La Nouvelle Judéophobie (Taguieff 2002). 26 See ‘“Radicalisations” et “islamophobie”: le roi est nu’, Libération, 14 March 2016. Olivier Roy has since publicly distanced himself from it in a joint interview with Pascal Bruckner. See ‘La querelle de l’islamophobie: Pascal Bruckner face à Olivier Roy’, L’Obs, 2 February 2017, https://bibliobs.nouvelobs. com/idees/20170202.OBS4759/la-querelle-de-l-islamophobie-pascal-bruckner-face-a-olivier-roy.html. 27 In fact, 10 years earlier the CNCDH was rather critical of the term ‘Islamophobia’ as revealed in a draft of its report for 2003. See ‘L’“islamophobie” et la judéophobie font la polémique’, Libération, 22 November 2003. 28 The title of Plenel’s book Pour les musulmans, first published in 2014, is a direct reference to an article written by Emile Zola entitled ‘Pour les Juifs’. It was aimed as a response to the comments of neorepublican intellectual Alain Finkielkraut who had stated in a radio interview that there was a ‘problem with Islam in France’. See the subsequent debate between Plenel and Finkielkraut in 2014 at www. youtube.com/watch?v=evURJiIw-jw. 29 Plenel was caricatured on the front page of the satirical newspaper which insinuated that Mediapart had deliberately covered up knowledge of alleged sexual assaults by the Swiss Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan. See ‘“Charlie” contre “Mediapart” vu du Royaume-Uni: ‘Une discussion consternante’, Le Monde, 15 November 2017.

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30 See the special section ‘La querelle de l’après-“Charlie”’ published in Le Monde, 7 May 2015, which includes the fierce reaction to Todd’s book by then Prime Minister Manuel Valls: ‘Non, la France du 11 janvier n’est pas une imposture’, www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2015/05/07/la-querelle-de-l-aprescharlie_4629495_3232.html. 31 A notable example is Riposte laïque, a website that initially claimed an affiliation with the Left there is now a clear overlap with elements of the extreme right (Hajjat and Mohammed 2013). 32 In one example picked up by the press, at the award ceremony for the prix de la laïcité (organised by the Comité Laïcité République) in October 2015, the journalist Suheda Asik was asked to remove her headscarf ‘out of respect’ for Paris City Hall in which the ceremony was taking place. 33 See ‘Valls-Hamon: deux visions de la laïcité’, Libération, 25 January 2017. 34 This quote comes from an article written for the Huffington Post in 2014 (see www.huffingtonpost. fr/marlene-schiappa-bruguiere/manuel-valls-quartiers-populaires-antisemites_b_5606114.html). Schiappa’s comments were then used to attack her once she entered the government.

References Asal, H. 2014. Islamophobie: la fabrique d’un nouveau concept. État des lieux de la recherche. Sociologie, 5(1), 13–29. Askolovitch, C. 2013. Nos mals-aimés: Ces musulmans dont la France ne veut pas. Paris: Grasset. Bale, T. et al. 2010. If you can’t beat them, join them? Explaining social democratic responses to the challenge from the populist radical right in Western Europe. Political Studies, 58(3), 410–426. Baubérot, J. 2013. The evolution of French Secularism. In: Ghosh, R. (ed.) Making Sense of the Secular: Critical Perspectives from Europe to Asia. London: Routledge, pp. 44–55. Baubérot, J. 2015. Les sept laïcités françaises: Le modèle français de laïcité n’existe pas. Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme. Beaman, J. 2017. Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Beaugé, J. and Hajjat, A. 2014. Élites françaises et construction du ‘problème musulman’. Le cas du Haut Conseil à l’intégration (1989–2012). Sociologie, 5(1), 31–59. Bowen, J. R. 2007. Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bowen, J. R. 2010. Can Islam Be French? Pluralism and Pragmatism in a Secularist State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bruckner, P. 2017. Un racisme imaginaire: Islamophobie et culpabilité. Paris: Grasset Callinicos, A. 2008. Marxists, Muslims and religion: Anglo-French attitudes. Historical Materialism, 16, 143–166. Chabal, E. 2015. A Divided Republic: Nation, State and Citizenship in Contemporary France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chouder, I. et al. 2008. Les filles voilées parlent. Paris: La Fabrique. CNCDH. 2014. La lutte contre le racisme, l’antisémitisme et la xénophobie. Année 2013. Paris: Commission Nationale Consultative des Droits de L’Homme. Commission Stasi. 2003. Commission de réflexion sur l’application du principe de laïcité dans la République. Paris: La documentation française. Delphy, C. 2015. Separate and Dominate: Feminism and Racism after the War on Terror. London: Verso books. Deltombe, T. 2005. L’islam imaginaire: la construction médiatique de l’islamophobie en France 1975–2005. Paris: La Découverte. Esteves, O. 2016. Islamophobia in France: national report 2015. In E. Bayraklı and F. Hafez (eds), European Islamophobia Report 2015. Istanbul: SETA, pp. 155–178. Fadil, N. 2010. Breaking the taboo of multiculturalism: the Belgian Left and Islam. In S. Sayyid and A. Vakil (eds) Thinking Through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives. London: Hurst, pp. 235–250. Fernando, M. 2014. The Republic Unsettled: Muslim French and the Contradictions of Secularism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Fredette, J. 2014. Constructing Muslims in France: Discourse, Public Identity, and the Politics of Citizenship. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Geisser, V. 2003. La Nouvelle islamophobie. Paris: La Découverte.

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Gordon, D. A. 2017. Antisemitism, Islamophobia and the search for common ground in French antiracist movements since 1898. In J. Renton and Gidley (eds) Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe: A Shared Story? London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 217–266. Hajjat, A. and Mohammed, M. 2013. Islamophobie: Comment les élites françaises fabriquent le ‘problème musulman’. Paris: La Découverte. HCI. 2010. Avis relatif à l’expression des religions dans les espaces publics. Paris: Haut Conseil à l’Intégration. Hennette Vauchez, S. and Valentin, V. 2014. L’affaire Baby Loup ou la nouvelle laïcité. Paris: LGDJ. IRR. 2011. Islamophobia and progressive values. London: Institute of Race Relations. Laborde, C. 2008. Critical Republicanism: The Hijab Controversy and Political Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lévy, L. 2010. ‘La gauche’, les Noirs et les Arabes. Paris: Editions La fabrique. Macmaster, N. 1996. Colonial Migrants and Racism: Algerians in France, 1900–62. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Mammone, A. 2015. Transnational Neofascism in France and Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mondon, A. and Winter, A. 2017. Articulations of Islamophobia: from the extreme to the mainstream? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(13), 2151–2179. Muhammad, M. 2017. Nous (aussi) sommes la Nation: Pourquoi il faut lutter contre l’islamophobie. Paris: La Découverte. Peace, T. 2009. Un antisémitisme nouveau? The debate about a ‘new antisemitism’ in France. Patterns of Prejudice, 43(2), 103–121. Peace, T. 2012. The French anti-racist movement and the Muslim Question. In C. Flood et  al. (eds), Political and Cultural Representations of Muslims: Islam in the Plural. Leiden: Brill, pp. 131–146. Peace, T. 2015. European Social Movements and Muslim Activism: Another world but with whom? Basingstoke: Palgrave. Peace, T. 2016. Who becomes a terrorist, and why? The Washington Post, 10 May 2016. Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/05/10/who-becomes-a-terrorist-andwhy/?utm_term=.1a353713afc6. Pina, C. 2016. Silence coupable. Paris: Editions Kero. Plenel, E. 2016. For the Muslims: Islamophobia in France. London: Verso. Quartiers XXI. 2015. L’islamophobie comme calcul électoral. La lente agonie des communistes de Vénissieux. Retrieved from http://quartiersxxi.org/l-islamophobie-comme-calcul-electoral. Roy, O. 2007. Secularism Confronts Islam. New York: Columbia University Press. Scott, J. W. 2007. Politics of the Veil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Silverman, M. 1992. Deconstructing the Nation: Immigration, Racism, and Citizenship in Modern France. London: Routledge. Silverstein, P. A. 2004. Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Taguieff, P. A. 2002. La nouvelle judéophobie. Paris: Mille et une nuits. Todd, E. 2015. Who Is Charlie? Xenophobia and the New Middle Class. Cambridge: Polity Press. Valls, M. 2005. La laïcité en face: entretiens avec Virginie Malabard. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer. Wolfreys, J. 2018. Republic of Islamophobia: The Rise of Respectable Racism in France. London: Hurst.

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10 The gendered dimension of Islamophobia in Belgium Amina Easat-Daas

This chapter asserts the underlying mechanisms of the gendered dimensions of Islamophobia in Belgium and states that historically rooted narratives contribute to modern-day ‘othering’ and paradoxically simultaneous alleged saving of Muslim women in the country. These points are contextualised and developed via the consideration of recent evidence from Belgian grassroots associations, national monitoring bodies, and also policies and practices at institutional, local, regional, national and supranational levels to illustrate both the direct and indirect forms of Islamophobia experienced by Belgian Muslim women. These include features particular to Belgium, such as the national face veil ban, or the French-style headscarf ban in schools in the francophone region of Verviers, and the recent controversies surrounding wearing the headscarf in the workplace. The chapter concludes with an examination of the modes of countering gendered Islamophobia in the country as led by self-identified Belgian Muslim women themselves.

Introduction Like many other countries in western Europe and beyond, Muslim women in Belgium continue to face disproportionate consequences of already growing rates of Islamophobia. This significant targeting of Muslim women in the nation transgresses boundaries of age, ethnicity, appearance, among numerous other factors. Key Belgian Islamophobia monitoring bodies, including the Belgian Counter-Islamophobia Collective (Collectif Contre l’Islamophobia en Belgique, CCIB; or Collectief Tegen Islamofobie in België as they are locally known in Belgium), Muslim Rights Belgium (MRB) and UNIA (Centre Interfédarale pour l’Égalité des Chances – Interfederal Centre for Equal Opportunities), for example, repeatedly report growing rates of Islamophobic acts against women, or women presumed to be Muslim1 (CCIB 2017; MRB 2014; UNIA 2017b). For example, in the month following the terror attack on the Belgian capital, Brussels in March 2016, the CCIB recorded thirty-six Islamophobic attacks; of these the majority impact Muslim women and especially visibly Muslim women. Quantitative evidence clearly indicates a significant and concerning dimension of the ways in which Islamophobia in Belgium is borne out. This chapter seeks to go beyond the statistical

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evidence to provide a detailed exploration of the numerous factors that give rise to disproportionate rates of Islamophobia against Muslim women in Belgium and in particular, to specifically consider the modes of gendered Islamophobia in the nation.

Background Belgium represents a perhaps unique case in western Europe; the federal nation is primarily comprised of two linguistic regions: francophone Brussels capital regional and region of Wallonia in the south of the country, and Flemish speaking Flanders in the north. In addition, the country is also made up of a small German speaking minority. These distinct linguistic regions add to the inherent cultural diversity of the nation and also shape the normative attitudes, normative structures at play across the country, with francophone regions being more likely to be influenced by neighbouring France, whereas Flanders is more likely to inherent features of the Dutch normative model. Understanding the normative differences that arise in the Belgian linguistic regions contributes to the understanding of not only the ways in which Islamophobia is borne out through the nation, but also and in particular it facilitates the comprehension of its gendered dimensions and manifestations throughout Belgium. In short, generally speaking the French secular model influences francophone Belgium while Dutch models are more likely to shape narratives in Flanders; however, this is becoming increasingly fluid. The Belgian Muslim community makes up approximately 6% of the wider national population (Pew Forum 2015), although official statistics are not recorded. The Belgian Muslim population is largely made up of ethnically Turkish and Moroccan migrant communities (Zibouh 2011a), and also a significant number of ethnic Belgians who have converted to Islam (Karagiannis 2012). Understanding that the Belgian Muslim community is predominantly comprised of individuals from ethnic minority origins contributes to the wider understanding of the intersectional racial and religious composition of the manifestation of gendered Islamophobia in the country. In terms of socioeconomic status, generally speaking multiple sources have shown that Muslims and especially Muslim women are more likely to face discrimination in seeking employment and maintaining work in the Belgian context (Mescoli 2016; UNIA 2017a). By extension, the increasing likelihood of exclusion of Muslims from the Belgian workforce then contributes to worsening the socioeconomic status of Belgian Muslims and importantly their prospects in the nation. Undeniably, this situation is likely to deteriorate further in the future given the recent preliminary judgements regarding the permissibility of dismissing Muslim women from employment on the grounds of the headscarf, as detailed in this chapter. With regards to the status of Islam in Belgium, like other populous religions in the country, under Article 24.1 of the Belgian constitution Islam has been afforded official state recognition since 1974 (Kanmaz 2002). In this regard, we see that Belgium differs significantly from neighbouring France for example, where there is a blanket alleged blindness to faith under laïcité, instead Belgium has a national policy of recognising religious groups with a significant number of adherents in the country. This official recognition afforded to Islam in Belgium means that Islam is represented at the state level by the Exécutif des Musulmans de Belgique/Execitief van de Moslims van België (Belgian Muslim Executive, EMB). The EMB is made up of two distinct, but cooperating, linguistic offices (Francophone and Flemish corresponding to the Wallonia and Brussels regions, and the Flanders regions respectively). The EMB comprises elected Muslim representatives (both male and female, from across the diverse Belgian Muslim community). The organisation is intended to act as an interlocutor between the Belgian state and the Belgian Muslim community. The representative body is also charged with coordinating Islamic religious 124

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festivals, coordinating Muslim chaplaincy, Islamic religious education provision in state schools. In fact, the EMB is responsible for 50 imams, 300 registered mosques, 1500 Islamic religious education teachers and 30 Muslim chaplains across the country. While this model and approach to religious affairs differs significantly from many seen across western Europe, it is the norm for officially recognised religions in Belgium. Notwithstanding, framing the likelihood of Belgian institutional Islamophobia solely in terms of the official state recognition of Muslims and Islam does not shed light on the structural and institutional nuances of the problem, nor does it elucidate Islamophobia’s gendered components at these levels. Put alternatively, the recognition of Islam at the national state level does not mean that institutional factors are not significant in the wider discussion of gendered (and non-gendered) manifestations of Islamophobia in Belgium.

Gendered manifestations of Islamophobia in Belgium In many ways the way in which Islamophobia manifests in Belgium is comparable to that observed in other western European cases, namely in neighbouring countries such as France or the Netherlands, thus rather than representing an isolated Belgian phenomenon, it is part of the broader global pattern of gendered Islamophobia. In this chapter I argue that the Belgian brand of Islamophobia functions on two principal bases: namely the argument of threat and secondly the often-employed argument of the subaltern subject in need of civilisation and a saviour. Notwithstanding, while there remain numerous ways in which the ideological bases of Islamophobia may be classified (see The Runnymede’s Trust’s 2017 report, Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for Us All (Elahi and Khan 2017), the distinction between threat and the construction of Muslims as being in need of a (often ideologically western European) saviour fits well with the examples of Islamophobic racism that emerge from the Belgian context. However rather than posing distinct categories, the examples of gendered Islamophobia presented within this section of the contribution, via detailing and analysing various examples of Islamophobia against women demonstrates a fluid moving between possible categories, in short gendered Islamophobia in Belgium is a fluid rather than static phenomenon. Furthermore, although very much influential in the present, I would also argue that these narratives of threat and saviour as the basis of Islamophobia are informed by historical and colonial narratives of Orientalism (Said 1978). Historically locating Islamophobic narratives in this way helps understand their origins and ways in which they may be deconstructed or effectively countered.

The narrative of threat: Muslim women and alleged demographic, cultural and violent threat The narrative of Islam and Muslims as a source of threat functions in numerous ways. The argument of threat is not limited to but primarily conceptualises Islam and Muslims as a source of demographic threat, as posing a threat to local culture, customs, traditions and the general Belgian way of life and finally as perpetrators of physical threat. As stated above, these narratives of threat do not function independently, instead are interconnected and overlapping. The construction of these narratives emphasises the ‘othering’ of Muslims and Islamic practices and therefore consequently legitimises Islamophobia by the state (and vice versa), in cultural productions and finally among the public. Rather than perceiving the relationship between the narrative of Islam and Muslims, and threat at state and public levels as a linear one, I would argue that it is more appropriate and useful to consider the relationship as a cyclical and non-linear relationship, meaning that the narrative of threat informs and is informed by state policies, culture and wider public opinion. 125

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Examples of the narrative of threat as a form of Islamophobia and as an informant of Islamophobic practices are apparent in the following cases in Belgium. With regards to framing Muslims as a source of demographic threat in Belgium, we see exaggerated discourses of ‘Muslims taking over’ commonly cited by Islamophobes, particularly those on the right of the Belgian political spectrum. For example, recent comments made by Belgian interior minister, Koen Geens of the Christen Democratishce en Vlaams (CD&V) party (Christian, Democratic and Flemish), who in an address to the European Parliament stated that the number of practicing Muslims in Brussels would soon outnumber that of practicing Christians (Montay 2017). This argument levied by Geens is not dissimilar to the broader far-right, Islamophobic arguments seen across western Europe relating to an alleged ‘de-Christianisation’ coupled with an alleged Islamisation of the continent. For example, the same notions resurfaced in the Belgian press (Ponciau 2017) or see Ye’or’s (2005) Islamophobic ‘Eurabia’ hypothesis2 for an example of this type of argument. Rationally speaking, although the Belgian Muslim population numbers around an estimated six percent across the nation (Pew Forum 2015), and the Brussels capital region is estimated to be made up of a twenty percent Muslim population (Hertogen 2008), with this figure rising to as high as forty percent in some areas such as Molenbeek (Easat-Daas 2016), the statistical evidence pertaining to Muslim populations underlines that at six percent nationally (Pew Forum 2015), the Belgium Muslim community is still not even the largest in western Europe, for example the French Muslim population is estimated to be at around eight percent of the total population (ibid.). These claims assume hyper-religiosity among Muslims without recognising the increasing secularisation of much of the general western European community. In short, the claims made by Geens, and others, do not function on the basis of logic or rationality, rather they serve to create national panic and promote Islamophobia. With regard to the position of Belgian Muslim women in the often-unfounded demographic Islamophobic arguments, Muslim women are seen as significant since it is the presumed hyperfertility of these women that allows (or will allow) for an alleged quantitative Muslim take over. Therefore, the female Muslim figure is central to the construction of national gendered Islamophobic narratives related to demographics. While this might not have direct consequences on public or legislative action against Muslim women in Belgium, the ideas that it nurtures are likely to inform wider hostility towards Belgian Muslim women which then may make them more likely to be subject to popular and/or institutional Islamophobia. Furthermore, I would also argue that notions of threat that emerge from the discourse of an alleged Muslim quantitative take over also feed into narratives of an alleged cultural threat posed by the Belgian Muslim population. Discourses which frame Muslims as an ideological and cultural threat seek to promote the myth that Muslim presence endangers the ‘Belgian way of life’.3 Under this trope, Muslim practices are explicitly targeted through the use of legislative measure, campaigning, via popular culture and the Belgian media. Examples of this are apparent in the coverage of the halal meat saga, or particularly in relation to Muslim women, controversies concerning Muslim women’s dress. Regrettably, Belgium is no stranger to affaires des foulards (headscarf affairs) or burkini hysteria as detailed in this section. Muslim practices are targeted under Belgian Islamophobia also. For example, 2017 saw extensive controversy surrounding the right to ritual slaughter (or halal and kosher slaughter) in Belgium. In May 2017, the francophone Walloon environment committee voted unanimously to prohibit ritual slaughter. If left unchallenged, this proposed and agreed ban will mean that it will no longer be possible to slaughter meat according to halal or kosher customs in the nation as of September 2019. The vote provoked outrage among Belgian and western European Jewish and Muslim communities, including strong and explicit condemnation from the European Jewish Congress (Osborne 2017). Support for the bans largely came from an animal rights and protection narrative which portrayed ritual slaughter as barbaric. 126

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Although not clearly gendered the targeting of Islamic practices in Belgium clearly ‘others’ Belgian Muslims (and in this case the Belgian Jewish community also). In addition, the evocation of barbarism and violence also feeds into wider Orientalist inspired narratives which see Muslims as a potential source of violent threat. The narrative of violent threat not only includes Muslim women as carriers of threat but also commonly provokes revenge attacks against Muslim women in the country. Thus, here we see the interrelatedness of Islamophobic ideas and the eventual gendered manifestations of Islamophobia in Belgium. Aside from nongendered practices, Muslim women’s dress is commonly discussed under the frame of posing a cultural threat. Perhaps, the explicit and perceived ‘Muslimness’ of the headscarf or face veil are seen as stark reminders of the Muslim presence in Belgium and therefore as a result are more commonly focused on in the Belgian national imagination. However, while notions of cultural threat are often evoked in national and local controversies pertaining to Muslim women, these national debates also cross over into debates of the saviour and therefore as a result, I have chosen to detail these further in the next section of this chapter. Finally, and as previously stated, under the narrative of threat Belgian Muslims are constructed as posing an alleged source of physical threat. Under these arguments, the narrative of Muslims as a source of violent threat is exemplified by terror attacks committed by so-called Muslims in the nation. For example, and perhaps the most striking example in recent Belgian history, on 22 March 2016 Maalbeek metro station in central Brussels and the Brussels Zavantem international airport were struck by terror attacks. The terror attacks led to 35 fatalities and caused in excess of 300 injuries (Easat-Daas 2017). The perpetrators of the terror attacks were all linked to Daesh4 and were all male, yet, as discussed further in this article, Muslim women largely bore the majority of Islamophobic attacks (CCIB 2016). For example, in the one-month period following the attacks, the CCIB reported a total of 36 Islamophobic attacks, indicating a sharp rise in anti-Muslim attacks following so-called ‘Islamic terror’ (CCIB 2017). Furthermore, given their comparatively higher levels of visibility – Muslim women are more likely to be subject to this increase in attacks. Therefore, rather than confirming the oversimplified narrative of Muslims being a source of threat, the statistical evidence points to a complex narrative of alleged Islamic extremism that subsequently leads to increases in Islamophobia against Muslims, in sum there is an overall increase in violence and this cannot solely be attributed to Muslims.

Between threat and saviour narratives: Belgian Muslim women’s bodies Controversy surrounding Muslim women’s dress in Belgium is not only framed under the banner of posing a threat to Belgian and Western norms, rather I would suggest that it is also often constructed under the colonial saviour tag, which sees Western normative constructs, particularly those concerning White Eurocentric feminism, applied as the standard to which Muslim women’s bodies must conform. Put alternatively, prohibitions surrounding Muslim women’s dress are constructed as measures taken to save Muslim women from enforced vestimentary practices allegedly enforced by Muslim males and as a result bring Muslim women into the folds of modern femininity. This argument also functions to confound Orientalist stereotypes, which frame Muslim men as violent and patriarchal, and Muslim women as passive subjects in need of saving. These type of ‘saviour actions’ evoke Spivakian notions of ‘the white men saving the brown women from the brown men’ (Spivak 1988). In recent years in Belgium the face veil (or niqab), the headscarf (or hijab), long skirts and burkinis have been subject to intense scrutiny, controls at the local and national levels and also significant attention in popular culture. In particular veiling by Muslim women, has been framed as posing a security threat to the nation. After receiving almost unanimous political support (Brems 127

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et al. 2012; Haspelagh 2012) the ‘Law concerning the wearing of all clothing that completely or partially conceals the face’ (Legifrance 2010), or niqab ban, was introduced in Belgium on 1 June 2011. Those found wearing the veil in Belgium would be subject to a fine amounting to between fifteen and twenty Euros. The ban was put in place, in spite of remarkably low estimates of Muslim women who actually wore the veil in Belgium5 (BBC 2011; Brems et al. 2012), indicating that the measures were in fact disproportionate and perhaps unnecessary. In France, similarly low estimates concerning the number of women who wore the veil are reported (BBC 2011), the Loi contre la dissimulation du visage (Law Against Face Covering) was introduced in the preceding year was constructed as a threat to French laïcité.6 Similarly, the image of the French matriarch Marianne was invoked in the period surrounding the proposal and introduction of the ban, implying that this essentially French figure would not cover her face and therefore nor should any other French woman in the country. Given the national centrality afforded to laïcité (Fayard and Rocheron 2009) and the figure of Marian, the Loi AntiNiqab (or Anti-Niqab Law), as it was known in popular parlance, constructs Muslim women who adopt this level of cover, or men seen to be forcing such women to cover, as external to French normative values, thus further emphasising the alterity of the Muslim figure in popular French culture. In turn, this alterity contributes to legitimising Islamophobic discourses and actions. This alterity in the French sphere was underlined by the obligation imposed on those caught wearing the face veil to pay a fairly sizeable monetary fine (€150) and to have to take French citizenship classes. Contrarily in Belgium, as stated the veiling ban centred on security discourses and did not carry the same extent of ‘otherising’, rather primarily functioned on the basis of security and to a lesser extent emphasised the alterity of Muslim women. The Belgian ban was also preceded by similar regional bans, particularly in Flanders (this national disparity in preceding legislation is possible in Belgium given the federal make-up of the nation) (Haspelagh 2012). Thus, the prohibition, arguably directed towards visibly Muslim women, is not entirely novel in the Belgian context. Nonetheless, in both cases, arguably regardless of the background narratives employed, the controls on Muslim women’s dress send a clear national signal related to the position and ‘otherness’ of Muslims, Muslim practices and especially Muslim women in the national imagination. The ban clearly illustrates how Muslim women’s bodies are indeed the cultural and ideological battleground. Additionally, in certain Flemish Belgian towns the burkini is currently prohibited from public pools. UNIA has been approached numerous times regarding the legitimacy of such interdictions, and this has resulted in the organisation concluding the burkini bans could constitute discriminations. Prohibiting women from wearing the burkini, UNIA stated, did not pose hygiene or security risks nor did it contradict gender-equality principles (Khan 2017). These Belgian controversies, I would argue, constitute gendered Islamophobia. Importantly, they do not exist in vacuum, rather they echo similar controversies that have taken place in neighbouring France and even as far as eastern Europe (Čada and Frantová 2017).7 Similar tropes are employed in other forms of regulation of Muslim women’s dress. These controls vary in nature and include the ‘long-skirt affair’ of summer 2015, whereby school girls wearing long skirts were stopped from entering their school on the grounds that the attire contradicted Belgian secular principles (Easat-Daas 2016). The long skirt affairs were problematic and irrational in the Belgian context for a variety of reasons, firstly and perhaps most obviously while one might classify the headscarf or face veil as examples of ‘Islamic dress’, the long skirt is in no way only worn by Muslim women, instead it is something worn by individuals of diverse ethnic and cultural background and therefore arguing that the long skirt is ‘too Muslim’

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is not coherent. Additionally, although French secularism has increasingly combative and Islamophobic dimensions which many advocates argue are inherent to its nature and the alleged complete separation of state and faith, constitutional Belgian organised secularism in fact permits recognition of religious groups and allows for religious practices. Therefore, arguing a ban on long skirts in Belgium on the grounds of secularism is at odds with national state led practices. Instead, the sagas only serve to ‘other’ and demonise Muslim women and in themselves are acts of Islamophobia that nurture and normalise further Islamophobia against Muslim women. Similarly, the ban on young girls from wearing the headscarf to school in the francophone Belgian area of Verviers (Verviers Conseil Communal 2013) incites principles of Belgian secularism. In this case, and in the long skirts example, notions of secularism (or laïcité) to legitimise limitations of Muslim women’s clothing played out in francophone Belgium. However, in the Belgian context, in spite of using the French term laïcité, secularism does not carry the same meaning or indeed origins as seen in the French context. Rather in Belgium, as mentioned previously, religious groups with a sizeable national body of adherents are afforded official state recognition, funding and provisions, whereas in France no religious group is legally recognised or funded in anyway; instead the French state sees itself, perhaps erroneously, as being entirely separate from all religious groups in the nation. Unlike in France, where there is a historical trajectory to laïcité, the Belgian incitement of secularism, I would argue, represents a move towards the adoption of French secularism and its current Islamophobic tendencies, demonstrating the fluidity of Islamophobia and Islamophobic discourses between national contexts. The ban imposed in Verviers represents a ban on young Muslim women in compulsory schooling. However, this type of gendered Islamophobic control is not limited to compulsory education; during August 2016 students who wore headscarves were prevented from taking access course exams in the francophone municipality of Uccle on the grounds of secularism. (Here, again we see the fluid movement of the secularism argument between the francophone French and Belgian contexts). The students were subsequently permitted to take their exams, but in rather confusing fashion, in early September 2016 a formal ban on the hijab in access courses was issued before being overturned a fortnight later (Easat-Daas 2017). The aforementioned controversies across the varying levels of the Belgian education system not only represent examples of clear legislated and organisation led gendered Islamophobia. However, such types of direct targeting of Muslim women and the clothing that they chose to wear are not limited only to Belgian schooling, instead similar controversies can be seen across numerous fields, such as employments or politics. On 14 March 2017, the European Court of Justice issued its preliminary judgements regarding the permissibility of dismissing women who wear the headscarf from employment. The preliminary judgement follows a joint hearing of two cases heard simultaneously by the European Court of Justice, that of Belgian, Samira Achbita, and Frenchwoman, Asma Bougnaoui. Previous cases pertaining to faith symbols in Europe have been heard by the European Court of Human Rights (Howard 2017), therefore in the first case of its kind heard by the European Court of Justice, the court was asked to judge the extent of direct or indirect discrimination in each of the cases presented before it. In Belgium, having already worked for G4S for three years, Samira Achbita announced her decision to adopt the headscarf in the workplace. She was informed that due to an ‘unwritten rule’ concerning employee ‘neutrality’ she could not manifest religious, political or philosophical insignia. Achbita declined to remove her headscarf and was subsequently dismissed by her employer. The case was heard by Labour Courts in Antwerp and rejected. Following appeal, the case was referred to the European Court of Justice by the Belgian Court of Cassation. French Micropole design engineer, Asma Bougnaoui was required to visit clients on site as part

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of her responsibility. After having received complaint regarding her headscarf from a client, Bougnaoui was asked to remove her headscarf on client visits. As she also declined, Bougnaoui was dismissed from the company. Her case was heard by the Parisian Labour Tribunal before being passed onto the European Court of Justice by the French Court of Cassation. General Advocate Sharpston concluded that the Achbita case stemming from Belgium did not constitute direct discrimination, whereas Bougnaoui’s dismissal in France represented direct discrimination. In spite of the technicalities of the preliminary judgements, the European Court of Justice decision sparked condemnation, split opinion and led to significant coverage. Most notably, in her analysis of the case Brems (2017) highlights the incoherencies of this Muslim centred case in which no reference was made to the growing climate of Islamophobia and hostility towards Muslim women. In Belgium, civil society actors were quick to speak out. Carlos Crespo, president of the Belgian organisation Movement Against Racism, Antisemitism and Xenophobia (Mouvement contre le Racisme, l’Antisémitisme et la Xénophobie, MRAX), stated ‘The decision will result in the facilitation of the already significant ostracisation of European citizens who are Muslim and who want to participate in the labour without necessarily having to denounce (or remove) their headscarf’ (Crespo 2017). Like many others who decried the potential carte blanche for the harassment and dismissal of visibly Muslim women employees, I too would argue that takeaway message from the European Court of Justice could be seen as legitimisation of gendered forms of Islamophobia in Belgium. While it may be argued by Islamophobes that these types of judicial decisions, along with the array of controversies linked to Muslim women’s bodies and what they choose to wear constitute a protection/saviour for Muslim women, they in fact work much to the contrary and serve to ‘otherise’ and exclude Muslim women from society both in the present and thus effectively contribute to society. Furthermore, exclusion of Muslim women from education and employment in particular undermine the ability of Muslim women in Belgium to project themselves into the future (Sayyid 2014). Notwithstanding the social, political and legal legitimacy of these measures that explicitly seek to control and regulate the outward appearance of Muslim women in Belgium have been repeatedly criticised (Brems 2017; Easat-Daas 2018; Howard 2017; Khan 2017; Ringelheim 2017). Regardless of these rational and logical responses that encompass an understanding of Belgian normative factors, politics and law, gendered Islamophobia in Belgium persists and continues to grow across multiple facets of society and is manifest in a range of ways.

Countering gendered Islamophobia in Belgium: Muslim women’s responses Belgian Muslim women’s responses to the growing and intensifying levels of gendered discrimination that they face is diverse and perhaps innumerable and thus cannot be covered in depth within the scope of this chapter. Rather below is a brief insight into some of the measures championed by Belgian Muslim. In terms of politics, Belgian Muslim women have enjoyed among the highest rates of representation at the national and federal level of Belgian politics (Easat-Daas 2015; Sinno 2009; Zibouh 2011b, 2013), with a combination of political opportunity structures – such as gender parity quotas, compulsory voting coupled with demographic concentrations of Muslims, along Muslim women’s political motivations give rise to this perhaps unique configuration. Nonetheless, Muslim women in politics continue to face disproportionate levels of gendered Islamophobia also both via direct

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attacks and as a result of the more general Islamophobic narrative (Easat-Daas 2017). However, rather than retiring from the political arena, Belgian Muslim women continue to strive to be engaged and represented in the Belgian political sphere, since it constitutes a means of expressing Muslim women’s voices, being part of the Belgian decision-making process and also as a means of ‘creating a better understanding of Islam’ (Easat-Daas 2015). Muslim women in Belgium are also highly active in the civil society level counter-Islamophobia scene, and their representation can be seen in groups such as the CCIB, ENAR (European Network against Racism) MRB, UNIA. Belgian Muslim women have been Involved in the direct monitoring (CCIB 2017), researching (Mescoli 2016) – for example in between 2015 and 2016 ENAR led their ‘Forgotten Women’ project which provides a detailed insight into gender based Islamophobia with specific reference to employment. Muslim women are active in contesting gendered dimensions of Belgian Islamophobia, while also challenging Islamophobia more broadly. Finally, Belgian civil society groups also pursue legal redress when appropriate (Jacobs and Carpriaux 2016). Artistic endeavours as a means of countering the gendered Islamophobia that they encounter are also led by Muslim women in Belgium. Bruxelloises et Voilées (Brussels woman and headscarf wearing) represents one such endeavour. The initiative was created by young Belgian women from the capital in early 2015. The group record and release a two-minute video on a monthly basis. In these videos, a Muslim woman who wears the headscarf is featured and details aspects of her life as a woman from Brussels (without explicit focus on the headscarf in her verbal discourse). These videos are then published on the group’s social media platforms and typically viewed over 4000 times each. Bruxelloises et Voilée representative Bouchra Saadallah states in the European Islamophobia Report: ‘The objective is to promote a multicultural society by fighting against discrimination and stereotypes, in particular against Muslim veiled women. It’s both an artistic movement and a militant initiative that aims . . . to show our diverse identities by speaking about everything but the hijab.’ I would argue that art-based measures constitute a more emotive means of countering Islamophobia and the narratives which underpin it, and thus may offer efficacy in areas which logically and rational responses alone may not have fully succeeded. In sum the value of a multi-faceted, multi-strategy approach to enable Muslim women, and Muslims more generally to reclaim the narrative that surrounds them cannot be underestimated.

Conclusion At the outset, I posited that the examples of gendered Islamophobia explored within this chapter had Orientalist underpinnings and could be loosely categorised in terms of on notions of threat (be it demographic, cultural or physical) or via a saviour narrative, whereby Muslim women’s dress is regulated to save them from the alleged perils of Islam, Muslim men and gender inequality. These classifications are evoked, among other normative, political and legal ideals, as a means of determining Muslim women’s conduct and appearance in the country. However, these narratives that enforce the alterity of Muslims, and especially Muslim women in Belgium (and arguably beyond) while also further idealising images of Europe as the heart of civilisation and modernity. Alongside this, emphasis on the ‘otherness’ of Muslim women, at the theoretical and practicebased levels, results in the legitimisation of modes of targeting Muslim women. This chapter highlighted that these are borne out via methods such as legislated (or semi-legislated) exclusion from education and the labour force, and also as statistical evidence shows, via verbal and physical attacks on Muslim women in Belgium. In sum the examples detailed in this chapter paint an

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increasingly bleak picture vis-à-vis Islamophobia against women in the country. Nonetheless, in spite of the growing numbers of physical attacks on Muslim women in Belgium, increasing gendered Islamophobic hate speech, prohibition of the headscarf in compulsory and non-compulsory education, and Muslim women’s exclusion from leisure and employment, Muslim women continue to take a pro-active role in countering the gendered dimensions of Belgian Islamophobia that they encounter – be it political, social or arts-based. Thus, in the face of a deteriorating situation for Muslim women, and especially for visibly Muslim women, these endeavours undeniably constitute positive action.

Notes 1 Although these aforementioned organisations, among others, in Belgium consistently report both growing rates of Islamophobia, and in particular growing rates of anti-Muslim hatred against Muslim women, such organisations often rely on self-reporting by those targeted by Islamophobia. Self-reporting bias will often mean that statistics recorded do not fully or entirely accurately the scale and gravity of the problem in question. Essentially relying on self-reporting only reveals the ‘tip of the iceberg’. Furthermore, the acts reported often only concern verbal, written or even physical attacks against individuals and locations, rather than dealing with the structural and ideological bases of Islamophobia in the country. 2 Ye’or posits that European, and in particular French, and Arab leaders are colluding to allow for the alleged Islamicisation of the continent (Ye’or 2005, p. 24) and is thus perhaps better classified as a conspiracy theory. Much of her hypothesis draws on dominant Islamophobic narratives, including those alleging inherent Muslim and Islamic violence and also Muslim ‘Judeophobia’. 3 The ‘Belgian way of life’, although not fixed or strictly definable as such, is often used within Islamophobic rhetoric, to construct all that is related to Islam and Muslims as oppositional., Therefore for example, Belgium (or indeed any other Western nation) is characterised as being in favour of gender equality, while Muslims are shown to be sexist (often the hijab is most typically cited in support of this claim). 4 The so-called ‘Islamic State of Syria and the Levant’. 5 It was estimated that as few as 30 women across the whole of Belgium wore the face veil (see http:// news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8652861.stm). 6 Broadly speaking, laïcité translates to secularism. However, it is difficult to capture the undertones and specific connotations of the term (Boussinesq 1994). In particular, current implementations of laïcité have distinctly shifted from being a counter-movement which aimed to lessen the power and influence of the Catholic Church in France, to one that is characterised by the distinctly Islamophobic goals of the project (Baubérot 2012; Ramadan 2004). 7 For example, Čada and Frantová (2017) discuss the spread of the burkini affair to the Czech Republic. During July 2017, images of Czech Muslim women at a water park wearing burkinis surfaced on social media and sparked fierce, and familiar, gendered Islamophobia. Similarly, in France during the summer of 2016 widespread national debate emerged surrounding Muslim women and burkinis. In each of these cases, dominant narratives centre on ideas of national norms and identity, gender rights and equality, security (and hygiene), and Muslim take-over.

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CCIB. 2016. Droits des Femmes et Dimension Sexiste de l’Islamophobie. Brussels: Collectif Contre l’Islamophobie en Belgique. CCIB. 2017. Rapport d’Activités 2016. Brussels: CCIB. Crespo, C. 2017. Le Cour de la Justice de l’Union Européenne Légtitime l’Interdiction du Foulard. Retrieved 15 March 2017 from http://mrax.be/wp/la-cour-de-justice-de-lunion-europeennelegitime-linterdiction-du-foulard. Easat-Daas, A. 2015. Muslim Women’s Political Participation in Francophone Europe: A Comparative Study of France and Belgium. PhD thesis, Aston University. Easat-Daas, A. 2016. Islamophobia in Belgium 2015: National Report 2015. In E. Bayrakli and F. Hafez (eds), European Islamophobia Report 2015. Istanbul: SETA, pp. 49–70. Easat-Daas, A. 2017 Islamophobia in Belgium: National Report 2016. In E. Bayrakli and F. Hafez (eds), European Islamophobia Report 2016. Istanbul: SETA, pp. 61–82. Easat-Daas, A. 2018. Islamphobia in Belgium 2017: National Report 2017. In E. Bayrakli and F. Hafez (eds), European Islamophobia Report 2017. Istanbul: SETA, pp. 85–108. Elahi, F. and Khan, O. 2017. Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for us All (A 20th Anniversary Report). In F. Elahi and O. Khan (eds), Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for us all. London: Runnymede Trust, pp. 5–12. Fayard, N. and Rocheron, Y. 2009. Ni Putes ni Soumises: A Republican Feminism from the Quartiers Sensibles. Modern and Contemporary France, 17(1), 1–18. Haspelagh, M. 2012. The Belgian Burqa Ban: Unveiled from a Human Rights Perspective. Master of Laws dissertation, University of Ghent. Hertogen, J. 2008. In België wonen 628,751 moslims. Retrieved 26 January 2015 from www.indymedia. be/index.html%3Fq=node%252F29363.html. Howard, E. 2017. Islamic headscarves and the CJEU: Achbita and Bougnaoui. Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law, 24(3), 348–366. Jacobs, A., and Carpriaux, C. 2016. Refusée par l’Académie des Arts de Bruxelles parce qu’elle porte le foulard. Brussels: BX1. Kanmaz, M. 2002. The Recognition and Institutionalisation of Islam in Belgium. The Muslim World, 92(1–2), 99–113. Karagiannis, E. 2012. European Converts to Islam: Mechanisms of Radicalization. Politics, Religion and Ideology, 13(1), 99–113. Khan, S. 2017. L’Interdiction du Burkini dans les Piscines Publiques peut-être Discriminante. Retrieved 13 July 2017 from www.rtbf.be/info/regions/detail_l-interdiction-du-burkini-dansles-piscines-publiques-peut-etre-discriminante?id=9659208. Legifrance 2010. Loi n° 2010–1192 du 11 octobre 2010 interdisant la dissimulation du visage dans l’espace public (France). Paris, France: Legifrance. Mescoli, E. 2016. Forgetten Women: The Impact of Islamophobia on Muslim Women in Belgium In D. Seta (ed.), Forgotten Women: The Impact of Islamophobia on Muslim Women Brussels: ENAR. pp. 1–63. Montay, J. 2017. Koen Geens et sa Future ‘Majorité de Musulmans’ en Europe. Retrieved 27 April 2016 from www.rtbf.be/info/belgique/detail_koen-geens-et-sa-future-majorite-de-musulmans-eneurope?id=9281452. MRB 2014. Islamophobie en Belgique Francophone: Rapport Annuel 2014. Brussels: Muslims’ Rights Belgium. Osborne, S. 2017. Belgium Votes to Ban Kosher and Halal Slaughter in it Biggest Territory. The Independent. Retrieved 8 May 2017 from www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/belgian-region-walloonbans-kosher-halal-meat-islam-jewish-a7723451.html. Pew Forum 2015. Religious Composition by Country 2010–2050. Retrieved 2 August 2015 from www. pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projection-table/2010/percent/all. Ponciau, L. 2017. Entre 11–18% des Musulmans en Belgique d’ici 2050. Retrieved 1 December 2017 from http:// plus.lesoir.be/127158/article/2017-12-01/entre-11-et-18-de-musulmans-en-belgique-dici-2050. Ramadan, T. 2004. Western Muslims and the Future of Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ringelheim, J. 2017. Les Interdictions de Port du Foulard Visant les Femmes Adultes: Analyse de la Ligue de Droits de l’Homme. Brussels: La Ligue de Droits de l’Homme. Said, E. 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge. Sayyid, S. 2014. A Measure of Islamophobia. Islamophobia Studies Journal, 2(1), 10–25. Sinno, A. H. 2009. Muslims in Western Politics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Spivak, G. C. 1988. Can the Subaltern Speak? In C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretaion of Culture. London: Macmillan. pp. 271–316.

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UNIA. 2017a. Les Premiers Chiffres d’UNIA pour 2016 Montrent une Hausse Sensible des Discriminations Présumées dans l’Emploi et l’Enseignement. Brussels: UNIA. Retrieved 18 December 2017 from www.unia.be/fr/articles/les-premiers-chiffres-dunia-pour-2016-montrent-une-hausse-sensible-desdiscriminations-presumees-dans-lemploi-et-lenseignement. UNIA. 2017b. Rapportr Annuel 2016–Por Une Société Inclusive: Par où (re)Commencer? Brussels: UNIA. Verviers Conseil Communal. 2013. Déclaration Politique Générale–Mandature Communale 2013–2018. Verviers: Verviers Conseil Communal. Ye’or, B. 2005. Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Press. Zibouh, F. 2011a. La Participation Politique des Élus d’Origine Maghrébine: Élections Régionales Bruxelloises et Stratégies Électorales. Louvain: Academia Bruylant. Zibouh, F. 2011b. La Représentation Politique des Musulmans à Bruxelles. Brussels Studies, 55, 1–15. Zibouh, F. 2013. Muslim Political Participation in Belgium: An Exceptional Political Representation in Europe. In J. S. Nielsen (ed.), Muslim Political Participation in Europe. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 17–33.

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11 Islamophobia in Ireland Challenges from below? James Carr

Introduction When I first started studying Islamophobia in Ireland, or (as I prefer to call it) anti-Muslim racism,1 it was 2010, and the Irish state and those residing therein were in the grip of recession. The Irish government, as with many others across the globe was engaged in a campaign of so-called ‘austerity’, embodied through large scale cuts to public expenditure. One of the first areas to face financial restrictions, indeed all out cuts to funding was the Irish human rights infrastructure. This included state agencies such as the Equality Authority and the semi-state body known as the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism (NCCRI). In the context of anti-Muslim racism, the NCCRI was unique in that it provided insights, albeit limited, on experiences of this pernicious phenomenon in Ireland. Qualitative information, ascertained through reports made to the NCCRI by civil society organisations (CSOs) and members of the public provided the only insights we had on anti-Muslim racism. The NCCRI did not capture data on rates of anti-Muslim hostility and discrimination (Carr 2016a). While bodies such as the Equality Tribunal did have data on reports of religious discrimination vis-à-vis accessing goods and services, these were not disaggregated by faith identity and as such it was impossible to readily identify anti-Muslim sentiment in these contexts. Thus, with the loss of the NCCRI we lost the only, available insights on antiMuslim racism in Ireland (ibid.). The need to understand how anti-Muslim racism was ‘playing out’ in Ireland underpinned the rationale for the first of two studies that I will discuss here. Based on the aforementioned context, study one set out to provide nuanced statistical and qualitative insights on anti-Muslim racism in Ireland. Not only would doing so provide otherwise absent information of the experiences of Muslim communities here in Ireland; moreover, the data emerging from this study would provide a basis for an evidence based argument to be made to the Irish state of the need to systematically record experiences of anti-Muslim racism. A decision was made that study one would prioritise anti-Muslim hostility and as such, the evidence provided would be used to engage with recording practice by the Irish police. Interestingly, this research concluded in an era where the number of police stations in Ireland were being ‘rationalised’ and the then Minister for Justice repeatedly referred to the need for smarter policing (Merrion Street 2017; Quinlan 2013). 135

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Study two was undertaken in partnership with two CSOs, the Immigrant Council of Ireland and the Open Society Foundations (Carr 2016b). As with study one, the focus was on providing insights on experiences of anti-Muslim hostility and discrimination in Ireland. As opposed to having a national footprint, study two was focused and localised to Dublin City and immediate environs. Building on the approach to catalyse meaningful change vis-à-vis challenging antiMuslim racism in Ireland, study two also set out to discover what Muslim men and women in Dublin felt would be the best ways to challenge this phenomenon; in other words, how could we challenge anti-Muslim racism from ‘below’, the ground up. While Muslim communities provided insights on experiences of anti-Muslim racism in Ireland in study one, their perspectives on how to challenge this phenomenon would be unique. For both studies, the aim was to include as diverse a range of Muslim voices as possible from across the heterogeneous voices that make up Muslim communities in Ireland. Ireland’s Muslim communities have experienced positive, rapid growth in recent decades. In the late 1950s, the estimated number of Muslim men and women in Ireland, localised in Dublin, stood at around two-hundred individuals. From the mid-1990s onward the numbers of Muslims recorded in Ireland have grown from the low thousands over ten-times that amount (Scharbrodt et al. 2015). Data from the most recent Census put the number of Muslims in Ireland at just over sixty-three thousand, an increase by approximately fourteen-thousand on the previous Census; this places Islam as one of the fastest growing religions in Ireland (Central Statistics Office 2017a). In addition to dynamic growth, Ireland’s Muslim communities are also very diverse and include a range of ethno-national backgrounds. As well as Irish, Muslim men and women in Ireland incorporate a range of identities including South Asian (largest representation), European, North and Sub-Saharan African, Middle Eastern, and Southeast Asian. When it comes to aspects of Islam, Muslim communities in Ireland are predominantly Sunni and there are also healthy Shi’a and Sufi communities and a smaller Ahmadiyya constituency (Carr 2017). In terms of national distribution, the area with the largest concentration of Muslims is Dublin, with various communities spread across the City. Outside of Dublin there are vibrant Muslim communities across the country with fairly even spread throughout; again the larger cities serve as an anchor for the communities. Demographically, Ireland’s Muslim communities reflect their UK counterparts when it comes to age with the majority of Muslims in Ireland falling in the under-forty-five age bracket (Central Statistics Office 2017b). The following sections will focus first on evidencing anti-Muslim racism in Ireland by drawing on the experiences shared by participants in the two studies of interest here. These insights will be followed by perspectives of community representatives on the role being played by the Irish state when it comes to addressing anti-Muslim racism. After briefly arguing theoretically as to why the apparatuses of the Irish state engage (or not) with anti-Muslim racism, the final section of this chapter will present insights as to how Muslim communities in Ireland feel this pernicious phenomenon can be challenged; focusing, in particular, on four thematic areas that emerged in the research process. These include: recognition; inclusion; support and protection; suggestions rooted in the voices of Muslim participants themselves. But first, evidence of antiMuslim racism in Ireland.

Evidencing anti-Muslim racism in Ireland The first of the two studies discussed here commenced in 2010 (Carr 2016a). Given the paucity of data on experiences of anti-Muslim racism in Ireland, study one set out to provide insights derived through both statistical and qualitative data. This required a mixed methods research approach involving the distribution of a questionnaire to Muslim men and women 136

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across fourteen towns and cities in Ireland; this in turn was followed by focus group discussions and one-to-one interviews. Participants for the initial survey phase were sampled initially through respondent driven sampling and latterly using a conventional snowball sampling approach. Participants for the qualitative phase of the study were purposively sampled guided by insights from the survey component. In all, three-hundred and twenty-three Muslim men and women participated in the survey; twenty-two in the group discussions and interviews.2 The findings from the survey phase of the study provided clear evidence of the presence of anti-Muslim racism in Ireland in the form of hostility and discrimination.3 Thirty-six per cent of participants indicated that they had experienced anti-Muslim hostility. This mainly manifested as verbal abuse (over eighty per cent) but there was also a significant percentage of physical abuse (over twenty per cent). In the case of the latter, Muslim women recalled having hijabs been torn from their heads, others detailed experiences of being spat at, being pushed, shoved and intimidated. When controlling for sex, statistical data revealed the differences in experiences of antiMuslim hostility between men and women. While Muslim men reported a rate of anti-Muslim hostility of nearly one-in-four, Muslim women reported a higher percentage with almost one in two female participants indicating that they had experienced hostility.4 A similar pattern emerged in relation to experiences of anti-Muslim discrimination. At a broad level, forty per cent of participants reported experiences of anti-Muslim discrimination; this predominantly manifested in and accessing employment; in and accessing education; shops, restaurants and using public transport. In the work space, participants referred to the hijab and beard as being problematic; others noted problems around prayer space and being facilitated around feasts such as Eid-al-Fitr. In public transport participants recalled negative treatment by bus drivers and fellow passengers; while in the education sphere, parents noted discriminatory barriers when enrolling their children in schools. As with hostility, Muslim women (40%) reported higher rate than men (22%) when the data were controlled for sex.5 As noted elsewhere (Carr 2016a, 2018), while efforts were made but to generate a probability sample these were unsuccessful; as such, the findings here cannot claim to be generalisable to all Muslim communities in Ireland. However, the patterns emerging in the data, for example the higher rates of experiencing anti-Muslim hostility and discrimination for women over men resonating with international evidence (Collective Against Islamophobia in France 2016); the manner in which hostility manifests predominantly as verbal abuse, with a lower but significant rate of physical abuse, resonating with various researches on hate crime (Transgender Equality Network Ireland 2015), may indicate that the statistical findings presented here are indicative of the trends of anti-Muslim racism in Ireland. These findings are bolstered by the themes that emerged in the qualitative data, which again resonate with international experience. These themes co-located Muslims and Islam with terrorism, misogyny and ‘hyper-patriarchy’, Muslim women as lacking in agency and intellect, Muslims as ‘suspect communities’ (Hickman et al. 2011; Razack 2008). The following quote was taken from an open comment box included on the questionnaire and encapsulates the aforementioned themes: Been called ‘filthy Arab’, hijab was pulled, drenched with beer . . . Followed home, pulled aside, asked if I was ‘open for business’ . . . Empty can thrown at me from moving car while yelling ‘f-in terrorist’ . . . (Female Muslim, Arabic, Cork) The presence of these themes and indeed the statistical data above make plain the realities of anti-Muslim racism in Ireland and the manner in which they resonate internationally. However, it is worth underscoring the importance of various racialising discourse of what it means to 137

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belong in diverse national contexts. For example, anti-Muslim racism in Ireland is informed, not only by international discourses but notions that Muslimness and Irishness are mutually exclusive: to be Irish one must be Catholic/Christian. Similarly, researches undertaken in other national contexts also point to the importance of local inflections informing anti-Muslim racism (Open Society Institute 2011; van Nieuwkerk 2004). Remaining on the topic of evidence of anti-Muslim racism in Ireland, but turning to study two, it is clear that anti-Muslim racism continues unabated (Carr 2016b). This second study, funded by the CSOs the Open Society Foundations and the Immigrant Council of Ireland, set out to: provide further evidence of anti-Muslim hostility and discrimination specifically in Dublin. A further aim of this second study was to provide insights on how Muslim men and women in Dublin perceived would be the best way to challenge anti-Muslim racism in Ireland. This latter element was vital. Up to this, the little research that had been undertaken with Muslim communities in Ireland on this topic focussed on providing evidence and means to ameliorate the situation through the apparatuses of the Irish state. Study two utilised a qualitative methods approach to engage with Muslim communities across Dublin city. In all, sixty-six people took part, with an even split across the sexes. All participants were purposively sampled on the basis of location and Islamic diversity. Focus groups formed the majority of interactions but there were also a small number of interviews. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the findings from these discussions again brought home the realities of anti-Muslim racism in Ireland. Participants recalled experiences of verbal abuse, assault, graffiti, damage to property and intimidation. These spanned the city of Dublin. In the more sought after areas of South Dublin, two young Muslim women were subject to extremely intimidating verbal assault by three men at a fast-food drive through; in the city centre a young Muslim woman recalled hearing someone shout ‘Muzzie’ before a glass bottle shattered in her path; in the west of the city in a more working-class neighbourhood, a young Muslim refugee shared how she experienced five anti-Muslim incidents in one week despite never encountering this phenomenon before (Carr 2016b). The impact this had was make her wear a coat with a hood so that she could hide her hijab in future. While the experiences of anti-Muslim persist, the terms of opprobrium used by assailants have contemporised somewhat. Instead of being labelled ‘bin Laden’ or ‘bin Laden’s wife’, the more common refrain now for assailants was to refer to ISIS or specific instances of terrorist activity in mainland Europe (ibid.). In terms of discrimination, participants in the second study again revealed the continued lived exclusions faced by Muslim men and women in Ireland on the basis of their racialised religious identity. Accessing education was again raised as an issue by parents of Muslim children and young adults. Participants also recalled experiences of anti-Muslim sentiment by peers and worryingly from teachers (ibid.). A young Muslim male recalled his teacher telling him to ‘shut up Allah’ when he disagreed about the content of a class discussion on Islam; a parent recalled how her hijabi daughter was told she would hear better ‘when you take off that stupid thing on your head’ when she asked a teacher to repeat a question. Participants again recalled experiences of discrimination in/looking for work, with the hijab again singled out for particular attention. Finally, discriminatory practices in shops, restaurants and public transport were also noted. Despite five years elapsing between these two studies it is clear that there is no real change in experiences of anti-Muslim discrimination (ibid.).

Little change The fact that there has been little to no change should not be surprising. Very little has changed at the level of state practices in Ireland to challenge this phenomenon. Yes, since November 138

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2015, the Irish police have the facility to record ‘anti-Muslim’ crimes on their Police Using Leading Systems Effectively (PULSE) system (Cullen 2015). An action that speaks directly to the recommendations for the initial research discussed above. However, at time of writing data on experiences of ‘anti-Muslim’ crimes are not published. At best, interested parties can access data, presented in an annualised format, by making a special request to the Central Statistics Office. Limitations also remain in the manner in which the data are presented with the Central Statistics Office reluctant to provide information disaggregated across all of the hate crime categories (Irish Times 2016). In 2018 the Irish Police Service: An Garda Síochána published data on reported hate crime in Ireland in their 2017 Annual Report. While highlighting an increase in overall numbers of reported hate crime, these data are not disaggregated across targeted communities. Apart from these issues, questions remain as to the level of training Irish police staff receive vis-à-vis the recording of anti-Muslim crimes inter alia (see for example Carr 2016a; Clarke 2013; Michael 2017). While having the facility to record anti-Muslim crimes is a welcome point, the lack of published data and question marks around levels of in- and preservice police training speak to a consistency in Irish state approaches to racism. Kulvir, a Sikh participant in study one, summed up his perspective on the Irish state’s policies on anti-racism and diversity: it’s just talk, talk, talk . . . nice catchy words . . . nice plans but nothing happening on the ground they have liaison officers but I don’t know what’s the use . . . I don’t know how many years they have been just talking about policies and nothing happening . . . no significant change on the ground. (Kulvir, Sikh male) Other participants such as Muslim community representative Azim used the term ‘superficial’ when referring to the approaches taken by the Irish state in this regard; Ahmad, another representative, referred to it as ‘a lot of talk . . . not much actions’. These findings resonate with others in the Irish context. For example Fanning et al. (2011, p. 12) refer to ‘some Irish anti-racism or diversity policies may in effect be “paper policies”’; window dressing as opposed to meaningful, substantive change. These contributions reveal a shared perception across academic and community actors that very little if anything is happening to meaningfully challenge racism in Ireland, beyond the ticking of boxes. As I have argued elsewhere but will elaborate on further here, the reasons for this state inactivity can be explained in large part I argue, due to Ireland’s intoxication with neoliberalism and persistence in maintaining narrow notions of what it means to be Irish.

Ireland as a neoliberal racial state Davis (2007) argues that any analysis of ‘race’ and racism needs to aware of the socio-political, economic and historic context it is being undertaken in. The fact that Ireland is beguiled by neoliberalism is well established in the literature (Allen 2009; Keohane and Kuhling 2014). This is unsurprising, Harvey (2005) argues that ‘almost all states . . . have embraced . . . some version of neoliberal theory and adjusted at least some policies and practices accordingly’. In this context, society is atomised; each individual is a ‘homo-œconomicus’ and entrepreneur of the self (Foucault 2010, p. 226). From this perspective one is a rational, responsible actor; responsible for their success and also for their failures in a meritocratic society that is blind to structural inequalities and their malign effects. In this context, issues related to ‘race’ and experiences of racism are denied through flawed ‘logics’ of colour blindness (Davis 2007; Lentin and Titley 2011). One’s racialised identity is not a barrier to success it goes, in a neoliberal society, only one’s 139

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willingness to work hard to develop their human capital can come between them and success. Failure to succeed in the neoliberal society is not a result of structural barriers but one’s own personal failings (Davis 2007). Issues relating around ‘race’ are privatised, thus evacuating the state from taking any role in addressing racisms in their multifarious forms. Racism and engaging in racist activity are the outgrowth of a private pathology, unique to the individual, one rotten apple (Giroux 2003). Likewise, if one experiences racism and requires support, one should look to oneself or privatised purveyors of ‘care’ in the business of addressing integration and racism, CSOs and non-governmental organisations (Goldberg 2009). At best, discourses of diversity may proliferate as policies de jour in a ‘race’ blind setting while policy interventions that could meaningfully address racism are attenuated (Davis 2007). Goldberg (2009, p. 334) argues that ‘the more robustly neoliberal the state . . . the more likely race would be rendered largely immune from state intervention’. At the same time though, while ‘race’ and notions of racialisation and their negative import are denied in Ireland, particular conceptions of what it means to be Irish prevail as is evident in the experiences of Muslim participants in the researches discussed above. Not only does ‘race’ denial serve a neoliberal purpose, it also permits the heretofore dominant group within Irish society to maintain its power in the face of dynamic social change. Discourses of diversity present the Irish state as a neutral actor, a mediator when it comes to the ‘us’ and the ‘other’. However, the lack of meaningful, substantive policies to challenge racism in reality serves to perpetuate the privilege, and dominance of those who ‘really’ belong, those who are ‘really’ Irish. Inaction in the face of racism allows the state to assert the boundaries of the nation; by not addressing those who engage racist activity, the state allows perpetrators of racism police who can ‘really’ belong in Ireland. The effect of inactivity on the part of the state in the face of racism is very real for those members of Ireland’s Muslim communities who experience anti-Muslim hostility and discrimination; a point borne out above. That said, I argue that the Irish state is a key actor if we are to meaningfully challenge to anti-Muslim racism in Ireland. This may seem strange given what I have argued above. I have previously argued in favour of engaging in a Faustian pact with the neoliberal state in the fight against anti-Muslim racism (Carr 2016a); engaging the neoliberal state on neoliberal terms, encouraging it to take action on the basis of an instrumental cost benefit analysis of why it should challenge racisms. Here though I want to make the argument that the state is the key, arguably only actor that can support a sustained challenge to racism in its diverse guises, including anti-Muslim racism. I concur with Giroux (2003, p. 206), who argues that ‘any attempt to address the politics of the new racism . . . must begin by reclaiming the language of the social and affirming the project of an inclusive democracy’.6 We must place the state front and centre in our efforts to challenge anti-Muslim racism, to move beyond accepting the state as a bogey-man, ‘to imagine the state as a vehicle for democratic values and a proponent for social and racial justice’ (ibid., p. 207). Giroux (2003) also argues the need for a widely dispersed ‘public pedagogy’ if we are to challenge racism and it is argued here that the state has a fundamental role to play in such a pedagogy. Moreover, Giroux’s argument for a public pedagogy strongly resonates with what members of Ireland’s Muslim communities themselves feel is required if we are to challenge anti-Muslim racism (ibid.). As noted above, a key aspect of study two was to illicit the views on Muslim men and women in Dublin as to how we can/should challenge antiMuslim racism in Ireland. The insights derived from this second study were far ranging and are elaborated in their entirety elsewhere (Carr 2016b). For present purposes, in terms of responding to anti-Muslim racism participants insights can usefully be disaggregated around four macro-themes that emerged in the second study, including: recognition; inclusion; support and protection. 140

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Challenging anti-Muslim racism: perspectives from ‘below’ The aforementioned four themes underpin and flow through ten specific recommendations that emanated from study two, vis-à-vis challenging anti-Muslim racism in Ireland. Each one of these recommendations can play an important role in producing the public pedagogy called for by Giroux (2003). For the purposes of this chapter, I am going to focus on key aspects of four of these recommendations in particular; namely, raising awareness; media, Islam and Muslims in Ireland; education and diversity; and hate crime legislation.

Raising awareness There was consensus among the participants of study two that, given the ubiquity of antiMuslim tropes, a counter-narrative be created that challenged the racialised imagery of Muslim communities. It was felt that such a counter-narrative would go some way toward challenging the all too pervasive negative stereotypes of Muslim communities, and importantly, their effects. Participants felt that an important manner in which to challenge such dehumanising discourses was to (re)humanise, to raise awareness of Muslim men and women as part and parcel of Irish society. For Salah the most important thing to do: . . . first and foremost is to make the larger community kind of understand that [Muslim] people. . . are not different, they are them; they are part of this country, they are part of the community, they are Irish citizens . . . (Salah) A central aspect of the public pedagogy manifest through public awareness campaigns to challenge anti-Muslim racism, from the perspective of participants, needs to focus on creating recognition that Muslim men and women are already a vibrant part of Irish society. Within this, participants were keen to bring the ‘normalcy’ of Muslimness in Ireland to the fore. In other words, campaigns that aim to raise awareness need not refer to Islam per se but focus more about Muslims as people; the otherwise mundane, for example the shared realities of being a parent, a student, being a football fan etc. multifarious activities and identities that are common in Irish society. Awareness raising campaigns with this focus would counter those racialising discourses that dehumanise Muslim communities by emphasising diversity as opposed to homogeneity, common humanity instead of difference. Zara and Maryam’s comments speak directly to the need to focus on ‘normalcy’: . . . just normalise Muslims, we are not aliens (laughter) or monsters . . . ‘so you are like us’ like that [was said] after a big conversation I have with colleagues, ‘so you are like us’ I said yeah we are . . . (Zara) . . . I wouldn’t like to be promoted as someone who is: oh my God yeah, she is Muslim. I don’t want that. I’m human, I work, I, I live, I eat, I drink, I drive, I’m human. Just simply a different faith that’s all. (Maryam) Interestingly, when asked on their views, only one participant stated that he would be supportive of campaigns that explicitly target anti-Muslim racism in their content. Another spoke of the need to have campaigns that clearly speak to anti-Muslim racism specifically, as well as those 141

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that function to humanise Muslim communities through the mundane. Racism needs to be called out for what it is; to fail to do so is to perpetuate ‘blindness’ emblematic of state practices towards racism: that racism is not a problem in our society. In the context of such awareness campaigns though, care must be taken so that anti-racism campaigns do not themselves act as a means to reinforce racist discourses. This was recognised by participants in study two, who while calling for a public pedagogy, argued that ‘retelling racism’ could be counterproductive, potentially making people, Muslim or members of groups targeted with racism, feel insecure through the sharing of other people’s experiences. As Perry (2001) argues, hate crime is a message crime. Anti-racism campaigns may be counterproductive if they essentially do the job of the racist assailant for them: . . . if you are making campaign [retelling racism], people will feel . . . if I have not experienced anything and people share this experience with me in the local [community] . . . again I’m feeling insecure to be honest. (Maria) Moreover, as one Muslim woman put it, reflecting on a central trope in gendered, racialised discourses of Muslim women: I don’t want to be promoted as someone who is vulnerable. Because when [you] show people that we’re vulnerable then they’ll treat us in a way . . . It could be good and bad . . . I don’t want to be treated like I’m someone special, because I’m not. I’m just a human, you know. And if we talk about our experiences, if I tell people, I don’t like telling people my experiences I’ve had simply because I don’t like people being sympathetic. I don’t want empathy, I just want to be treated as a normal person, simply, you know. (Fatima)

Media, Islam and Muslims in Ireland Participants in study two held predominantly negative perspectives towards the media in general to the extent that some believed there was an anti-Muslim agenda at work. In order for the public pedagogy to be disseminated across society, participants argued for greater media inclusion when it comes to Muslims and media in Ireland and also an engagement with media outlets vis-à-vis sensationalist reporting practices. In the case of the latter, a view was expressed that the voices, and indeed faces of ordinary Muslims in Ireland were sorely lacking. With the exception of some usual Muslim community ‘representatives’, there are very few Muslim voices in Irish mainstream media, indeed only two (Baz Ahmawy and recently Hajar Akl) spring to mind at the time of writing; unless the issue at hand relates directly to ‘Muslim issues’. The inclusion of Muslim voices and faces in the mainstream media on a range of topics would go some way towards humanising Muslim communities in Ireland in a highly accessible manner: . . . you never see Muslims on TV if it’s not about Islam, or a documentary on Islam . . . if you were to get a Muslim, or even just like a group of people to do some sort of a programme, it doesn’t have to be on the religion just to show that they’re normal people . . . (Rabia) A final note on engagement with media outlets referred to reporting standards. Participants felt that media outlets used language that stigmatised Muslim communities. It was suggested that 142

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efforts should be made to engage with media producers so that they would be sensitised to the impact of their reporting on Muslim men and women. Saad argues against the co-location of terrorist acts with Muslimness and the resultant ‘suspectification’ (Hickman et al. 2011): . . . when there is a problem, say for example we don’t wish but happens against attack in Rome, London, Iraq, ISIS so the media would concentrate about Islam the Muslims doing that and every Muslim should be in suspicion. So I suggest that if someone comes to talk to the media to say they [e.g. ISIS] don’t represent everybody . . . (Saad)

Education and diversity As demonstrated above, Muslim parents and children face discrimination in and accessing the education system in Ireland. The issue of discrimination accessing the education system is currently under review in the Irish context (Department of Education and Skills 2017). In the classroom, students have had to experience anti-Muslim racism with aspects of their faith identity directly targeted from both staff and students. Furthermore, when students do experience anti-Muslim racism and seek support they find their reports falling on deaf ears with no ameliorative action being taken. A core aspect of any public pedagogy clearly needs to focus on the educational context engaging with the school peers but also with teachers. Participants suggested that civil society organisations work in partnership with education providers to develop and implement in- and pre-service teacher training modules that directly addressed anti-Muslim racism. In relation to young students, participants suggested the design and implementation of modules for the classroom that would engage with ideas around who Muslims in Ireland are; experiences of anti-Muslim racism; challenge stereotypes; and provide advice and support for those targeted. Interestingly, it was also suggested this need not necessarily be done in the context of religious education but instead where the focus is on diversity and indeed the ‘sameness’ of Muslims and non-Muslims. . . . they have to put something . . . small subject to the kids you know in the schools . . . showing the good things, not just what they hear in the news because when you’re a kid, when they told you something it’s going to your head, you never forget it you know like . . . so I believe this is good idea if they bring something to put it in on the school and teach the kids, even the teacher as well most of the teacher they don’t know, they have to get more education . . . (Moosa)

Hate crime legislation A final area for discussion relates to the need for hate crime legislation in Ireland. As it stands, Ireland is without the legal means to challenge hate crime as a specific from other kinds of criminal activity. As such, those who engage in hostility targeting Muslims as well as other social groupings on the basis of their identity are unlikely to face any stiffer penalty for their crime. Relatedly, those who are the target of hate crime will find that the legislative supports they need are sadly lacking. Perry (2001) refers to hate crime as a message crime; an act(s) that communicate to those targeted that they are ‘other’, that they are not part of the dominant in-group in society. Hate crime legislation on the other hand, drawing on Iganski (2008) can serve a declaratory purpose, sending a message from society, through the state that hate crime is not acceptable, that those targeted are 143

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not the ‘other’ but a core part of the ‘us’. Hate crime legislation is a fundamental aspect of any public pedagogy, making as it does a clear statement of what we will not tolerate in our society.

Conclusion The evidence of anti-Muslim racism in Ireland is clear and resonates strongly with the international experience. Despite the publication and dissemination of this evidence at a range of fora, meaningful state engagement remains a chimera. The argument made here, building on Giroux’s (2003) calls for an engagement with a public pedagogy to challenge anti-Muslim racism in Ireland; a pedagogy that challenges dehumanising, racialised representations and discourses of Muslimness and informs popular perspectives on Islam and Muslim communities. That Ireland is a neoliberal racial state is firmly acknowledged above; however, drawing again on Giroux (ibid.) it is argued here that the state, its apparatuses and legislative powers have to be reclaimed in the fight against all racisms. As I have argued elsewhere this may require some form of Faustian pact with the neoliberal state if this challenge is to succeed. The experiences of Muslim men and women in Ireland behove us to at least try. The contributions of participants in both of the studies discussed above clearly point the way for those with at least some influence on the functions of the state to act. Those working to challenge anti-Muslim racism in the Irish context can and have learned a lot from the experiences from other contexts; similarly, the perspectives shared here can also transfer to other jurisdictions, point the way to challenge anti-Muslim racism ‘from below’.

Notes 1 I prefer the term anti-Muslim racism as it can serve as a tool to generate dialogue on the experiences of anti-Muslim hostility and discrimination set to broader histories and knowledges of racisms; moreover, by engaging with the term racism, we go some way to raising questions about the processes of racialisation that underpin how communities are constructed as ‘other’ (see Carr 2016a for more in this regard). In addition, please see Claire Alexander’s submission to the Runnymede Trust report Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for Us All, which also points up the importance of recognising experiences of anti-Muslim racism as racism (Runnymede Trust 2017). 2 For more on sampling and other methodological issues please see Carr (2018). 3 Participants were initially asked if they had experienced hostility and/or discrimination in a general sense; this was followed by a verification question wherein participants were asked if they believed they were targeted on the basis of their Muslimness. 4 Muslim women (44%) reported a 1.6 times likelihood of experiencing anti-Muslim hostility when compared to their male (28%) co-religionists. 5 While at a broad level Muslim women reported higher experiences of discrimination when compared to men, this did vary across the locations where one may experience discrimination; for example, Muslim men reported higher rates of discrimination in and accessing work; Muslim women noted higher rates of discrimination than men in accessing public transport.This may be the result of Muslim men, who may otherwise be unidentifiably Muslim, becoming identifiable in the job application process (names) or in the work space. 6 I do not believe anti-Muslim racism to be a form of ‘new racism’ but one which has manifested for over a millennium, albeit shifting depending on the context wherein it was active see Carr (2016a) for more.

References Allen, K. 2009. Ireland’s Economic Crash: A Radical Agenda for Change. Dublin: The Liffey Press. Alexander, C. 2017. Raceing Islamophobia. In Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for Us All. London: Runnymede Trust, pp. 13–15. Retrieved from www.runnymedetrust.org/uploads/Islamophobia%20 Report%202018%20FINAL.pdf (accessed 4 April 2018).

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An Garda Síochána (2018) Annual Report 2017 [online] available: https://www.garda.ie/en/about-us/ our-departments/office-of-corporate-communications/news-media/garda-annual-report-2017.pdf [accessed: 21st December 2018]. Carr, J. 2016a. Experiences of Islamophobia: Living with Racism in the Neoliberal Era. London: Routledge. Carr, J. 2016b. Islamophobia in Dublin: Experiences and How to Respond. Dublin: Immigrant Council of Ireland. Retrieved from http://immigrantcouncil.ie/files/publications/e9837-islamfinal.pdf (accessed 27 October 2017). Carr, J. 2017. Ireland. In O. Scharbrodt, S. Akӧnül, A. Alibašić and J. S. Nielsen (eds), Yearbook of Muslims in Europe, pp. 362–379. Leiden: Brill. Carr, J. 2018. Researching Anti-Muslim Racism with Muslim Communities in Ireland A Non-Muslim Perspective. Sage Research Methods Cases. London: Sage. Central Statistics Office. 2017a. Religion. Retrieved from www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/releasespublications/ documents/population/2017/Chapter_8_Religion.pdf (accessed 29 October 2017). Central Statistics Office. 2017b. Census 2011 Reports. Retrieved from www.cso.ie/en/census/census 2011reports (accessed 29 October 2017). Clarke, H. 2013. Recording Racism in Ireland. Retrieved from www.integrationcentre.ie/get attachment/d70f7539-ce06-403d-98d7-da21f7d46426/Recording-Racism-in-Ireland.aspx (accessed 27 September 2013). Collective Against Islamophobia in France. 2016. Report 2016. Retrieved from http://tbinternet.ohchr. org/Treaties/CEDAW/Shared%20Documents/FRA/INT_CEDAW_NGO_FRA_24437_E.pdf (accessed 29 October 2017). Cullen, A. 2015. Pulse System Reform Allows Logging of Racism and Hate Crimes. Irish Independent. Retrieved from www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/pulse-system-reform-allows-logging-of-racism-and-hate-crimes-34303002.html (accessed 29 October 2017). Davis, D. A. 2007. Narrating the Mute: Racialising and Racism in a Neoliberal Moment. Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, 9(4), 346–360. Department of Education and Skills. 2017. Minister Bruton Sets Out Approach to Remove Religion as a Criteria in Admissions Process. Retrieved from www.education.ie/en/Press-Events/PressReleases/2017-Press-Releases/PR2017-06-28.html (accessed 29 October 2017). Fanning, B., Killoran, B., Ní Bhroin, S., and McEvoy, G. 2011. Taking Racism Seriously: Migrant’s Experiences of Violence, Harassment and Anti-Social Behaviour in the Dublin Area. Retrieved from http://emn.ie/files/p_201211220244102011_TakingRacismSeriously_ICI.pdf (accessed 27 October 2017). Foucault, M. 2010. Lecture 9, 14th March 1979. In M. Senellart (ed.), Michel Foucault: The Birth of Biopolitics; Lectures at the Collége de France 1978–79, pp. 215–239. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Giroux, H. A. 2003. Public Pedagogy and the Politics of Resistance: Notes on a Critical Theory of Educational Struggle. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 35(1), 5–16. Goldberg, D. T. 2009. The Threat of Race: Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Harvey, D. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hickman, M., Thomas, L., Silvestri, S. and Nickels, H. 2011. ‘Suspect Communities’? Counter-terrorism Policy, the Press, and the Impact on Irish and Muslim Communities in Britain. London: London Metropolitan University. Retrieved from www.statewatch.org/news/2011/jul/uk-london-metsuspect-communities-findings.pdf (accessed 29 October 2017). Iganski, P. 2008. Hate Crime and the City. Bristol: Policy Press. Irish Times. 2016. One Hate Crime Reported to Garda Every Day, Figures Show. Irish Times. Retrieved from www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/one-hate-crime-reported-to-garda-every-day-figuresshow-1.2831615 (accessed 29 October 2017). Keohane, K. and Kuhling, C. 2014. The Domestic, Moral and Political Economies of Post-Celtic Tiger Ireland: What Rough Beast? Manchester: Manchester University Press. Lentin, A. and Titley, G. 2011. The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age. London: Zed Books. Merrion Street. 2017. Address by Mr Alan Shatter TD, Minister for Justice, Equality and Defence, to the 2011 Annual Conference of the Garda Representative Association. Retrieved from https:// merrionstreet.ie/en/News-Room/Speeches/address-by-mr-alan-shatter-td-minister-for-justiceequality-and-defence-to-the-2011-annual-conference-of-the-garda-representative-association.html (accessed 29 October 2017).

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Michael, L. 2017. Reports of Racism in Ireland: 13th + 14th Quarterly Reports of iReport.ie, July–December 2016. Retrieved from http://enarireland.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/iReport_1314_Final.pdf (accessed 27 October 2017). Open Society Institute. 2011. Unveiling the Truth: Why 32 Muslim Women Wear the Full Face Veil in France. Retrieved from www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/a-unveiling-thetruth-20100510_0.pdf (accessed 27 July 2017). Perry, B. 2001. In the Name of Hate: Understanding Hate Crimes. New York: Routledge. Quinlan, R. 2013. Seven Garda Stations in Close Proximity to Minister’s Dublin Home. The Irish Independent. Retrieved from www.independent.ie/irish-news/security-not-a-worry-in-shatters-locality29046305.html (accessed 29 October 2017). Razack, S. H. 2008. Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims from Western Law and Politics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Runnymede Trust. 2017. Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for Us All. London: Runnymede Trust. Scharbrodt, O., Sakaranaho, T., Khan, A.H., Shanneik, Y., and Ibrahim, V. 2015. Muslims in Ireland: Past and Present. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Transgender Equality Network Ireland (2015) STAD: Stop Transphobia and Discrimination Report. Retrieved from www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/app/uploads/2015/09/TENI-STAD-Report.pdf (accessed 29 October 2017). Van Nieuwkerk, K. 2004. Veils and Wooden Clogs Don’t Go Together. Ethnos, 69(2), 229–246.

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12 The racialised and Islamophobic framing of the Rotherham and Rochdale child sexual abuse scandals Waqas Tufail

Introduction For over a decade, British Muslims have been at the forefront of political, media and societal concerns in regards to terrorism, radicalisation, women’s rights, segregation and, most recently, the sexual exploitation and abuse of young women. Demonised, marginalised and criminalised due to inflammatory political rhetoric, inaccurate, irresponsible and sensationalist media reporting, discriminatory counter terrorism policies and legislation and state surveillance, British Muslims have emerged as a perceived racialised threat. This has continued apace with the onset of the Rochdale and Rotherham ‘grooming’ child sexual abuse scandals which in popular discourse have been dominated by representations focusing on race, ethnicity and the dangerous masculinities of Muslim men (Cockbain 2013; Gill and Harrison 2015). This disproportionate and racist narrative has served to both frame and limit the debate relating to the sexual exploitation and violence experienced by young female victims at a pivotal moment when the issue had been brought to national attention. This chapter compares and contrasts the representations and discourse of racialised and non-racialised reporting of child sexual abuse and situates the ‘grooming’ scandals in the context of anti-Muslim racism. The history of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism within the UK (and further afield) was established long before 2001 (Poynting and Mason 2007), yet in recent years these forms of racism have, arguably, significantly intensified. This period has been punctuated by the specific targeting of young British Muslims through state surveillance, such as in the form of divisive and discriminatory government-funded ‘counter terrorism’ initiatives (Kundnani 2014); by far right nationalist groups marching through and attacking areas with large Muslim populations (Johnston and Kavanagh 2013); and by violently racist anti-Muslim attacks resulting in the killing of British citizens (Greatrex 2013). These examples are not unique and are compounded by recent episodes of racialised panic generated by lurid (and unfounded) headlines of ‘Islamic takeovers’ within schools and by reports of British Muslims attempting to reach conflict zones in Syria and Iraq. Contemporary Islamophobia is recognised for its notable presence in the online world (Awan and Zempi 2016) and as a globalised phenomenon observable in a multitude of Western contexts (Morgan and Poynting 2012). 147

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Recent high profile news stories relating to sexual abuse occurring within the towns of Rotherham in South Yorkshire and Rochdale in Greater Manchester have led to a number of significant consequences, including the publication of independent reports highlighting individual and institutional failures. The most high profile of these, a report by Professor Alexis Jay (2014) examining the child abuse that took place in Rotherham, caused a sensation in the media and resulted in widespread condemnation of the local council, police and social services. A prominent feature in the media and political discourse that followed, however, was that these events could be examined through a lens of race and ethnicity. In particular, attention swiftly turned to the events and their causes being attributed, variously, to ‘Muslim’, ‘Asian’ and ‘Pakistani’ communities. This chapter is concerned with addressing the reporting and fallout from the events in Rotherham and from the earlier events in Rochdale. Specifically, it argues that the representation of the events that took place in Rotherham and Rochdale and the subsequent impact this had, vary markedly from other instances where the sexual abuse of women and young girls has been reported. It is argued that the representations of the ‘grooming’ sexual abuse scandals can be understood through the ‘mainstreaming of Islamophobia’ (Hussein and Poynting 2017, p. 337) within contemporary Western societies, of which a key component is ‘alleged hyperpatricarchy and entrenched misogyny’ and ‘the supposed tolerance of child abuse’. Moreover, and with reference to empirical data, it is argued that negative portrayals of Muslims collectively seeking to hold whole communities to account for the crimes of a few, further alienate and criminalise this community, one already facing discriminatory counter-terrorism policies and legislation, state surveillance, disproportionate policing and consistent demands to integrate (Tufail and Poynting 2013). The racialised and Islamophobic framing of the Rochdale and Rotherham child sexual abuse scandals, emboldended by the narratives of prominent media, state institutions and political elites, has also prevented the core issue of violence against women being placed at the centre of public debate.

Background: Rotherham, Rochdale and the emergence of the ‘grooming’ child abuse scandals In November 2010, five men were jailed for a series of sex offences committed against children in Rotherham, South Yorkshire (BBC News 2010). The events, labelled at the time as the ‘Asian grooming case’ by the Yorkshire Post (2010), returned to the spotlight in 2012 after an investigation by The Times (Norfolk 2012), based on confidential police reports and intelligence, revealed that offenders identified to the police were not prosecuted and that child abuse had taken place on a ‘vast scale’. The Times alleged that, in the confidential police and council documents they had accessed, there was reluctance to investigate and prosecute Asian offenders due to fear over exacerbating community tensions. Quite predictably, the aftermath of The Times investigation proved to be oxygen for the far right, from fascist groups such as the British National Party (BNP), which subsequently imploded in the 2015 UK general elections, to the similarly inclined but seemingly more mainstream United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). However, the events also ignited debate across the media and political spectrum with commentators Right and Left jostling for position in order to offer a perspective on precisely what had transpired to generate – by all accounts – the widespread sexual abuse of female children. A key moment that heightened interest, outrage, debate and speculation in the Rotherham child sex abuse cases was the publication of a report by Professor Alexis Jay, titled Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham (2014), hereafter referred to as the Jay Report. Published in August 2014, the major headline to emerge from the report was the author’s 148

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‘conservative’ estimate that at least 1,400 children had been sexually abused and exploited between 1997 and 2013. This revelation of widespread child sexual exploitation dominated the news headlines for several days and resulted in the Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council leader Roger Stone stepping down with immediate effect, followed by a string of other high profile resignations (most notably of Shaun Wright, the South Yorkshire Police Crime Commissioner who, in somewhat farcical and ultimately futile circumstances, had initially refused to stand down). The fallout from these revelations was dramatic and is in many senses an on-going process; debate has raged on the roles of race, ethnicity, class and gender in facilitating the abuse of women and of catastrophic and possibly corrupt individual and institutional failure from agencies including the police, council and social services. The National Crime Agency (NCA) opened a special investigation named Operation Stovewood examining historical sexual abuse crimes committed in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. As of 2018, 110 potential suspects have been idenitifed, of which 38 have been arrested, 18 charged and 4 convicted with lenghty prison sentences (Halliday 2018). This followed the launch of Operation Yewtree, a Metropolitan Police investigation into allegations of sexual abuse committed by celebrities including Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris and Max Clifford. More recently, football coach Barry Bennell was sentenced to over 30 years in prison for more than 50 historical sexual abuse offences against young boys and the associated investigation into abuse in football, Operation Hydrant, has identified over 290 suspects and 839 possible victims (The Guardian 2018). This chapter examines the ways in which the Rotherham child sex case abuse cases and their aftermath were reported, while also referencing the Rochdale child sex abuse cases (see Tufail and Poynting 2016 for a more detailed analysis and discussion of the events that took place in Rochdale). The racialised and Islamophobic framing of the Rotherham and Rochdale child sexual abuse scandals has resulted in a number of deleterious consequences including worsened community relations, violent anti-Muslim racism and the decentring of violence against women in public debate.

Media framing and ‘the ethnic dimension’ The immediate fallout from the Jay Report involved a flurry of newspaper headlines and reports condemning the abuses. The Daily Express (2014), for example, presented its outrage by railing against the ‘Muslim gangs’ operating in Rotherham while declaring that ‘the feelings of ethnic minorities or those on the Left who presume to speak for them has no part to play’. In similar fashion, The Telegraph ran an article by columnist Allison Pearson (2014) suggesting that the root cause of the abuses ran at the heart of either (or both) the Muslim and Pakistani community. Pearson, noted for her bigoted, outspoken views, took issue with the cultural allowances ‘the West’ had made to these seemingly backward communities. As Pearson explained, ‘Leaders of the Pakistani Muslim community – essentially a Victorian society that has landed like Doctor Who’s Tardis on a liberal, permissive planet it despises – are at pains to deny that the grooming gang’s behaviour has anything to do with ethnic origin or contemptible attitudes towards women’ (Pearson 2014). Essentially a tirade against Leftists, multiculturalism and political correctness, the article was certainly not alone in adopting this particular focus. Indeed, the Rotherham child abuse scandal was international news, evidenced by an article in the Washington Post titled ‘Political Correctness about Muslims may have led UK officials to ignore reports of sex abuse’ (Grundy 2014). The Daily Mail, however, also extended its outrage to rival news outlets with an article by de Graaf (2014) attacking the BBC for not highlighting enough that the abusers in Rotherham were Asian men. The claims were centred on her analysis that ‘Four of seven articles on BBC News online do not mention 149

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Pakistani men’ (De Graaf 2014). De Graaf suggested that race and ethnicity were mentioned in the Jay Report and were thus relevant factors in the sexual abuses that took place. Both tabloid and broadsheet newspapers focussed on the aspects of the Jay Report that related to race and ethnicity. A section of the report was dedicated to ‘Issues of Ethnicity’ and it concluded that staff across agencies including the council and police were reluctant to frame matters related to child sexual exploitation (CSE) as having an ‘ethnic dimension’. On race and ethnicity, the analysis within the Jay Report is evidently weak, with little attempt at nuance and lacking any sense of detail. For instance, it included problematic statements such as ‘there was a widespread perception that messages conveyed by some senior people in the Council and also the Police, were to “downplay” the ethnic dimensions of CSE’ (Jay 2014, p. 91). What these ‘ethnic dimensions’ might be are never discussed or explained by Jay. Rather, the reader is compelled to read between the lines and assume that, as the ethnicities of the perpetrators and victims are different, an ‘ethnic dimension’ had to be at play. The clumsy analysis and phrasing of matters related to race and ethnicity is repeated in the recommendations section of the Jay Report. It contends in Recommendation 14 that: ‘The issue of race should be tackled as an absolute priority if it is a significant factor in the criminal activity of organised child sexual abuse in the Borough’ (Jay 2014, p. 93). Again, no attempt is made to examine or explain what exactly it is about race that may be such a ‘significant factor’ in the context of child abuse. This lack of specificity by Jay, I argue, was a contributory factor to the lurid and hysterical headlines which painted a picture of a council and police force failing to prevent child abuse for fear of being labelled racist. This, too, is a rather peculiar contention. ‘Asian males’, the ethnic category under scrutiny in the context of the Rochdale and Rotherham child abuse scandals, is – within the criminal justice system – a broad-brush category usually referring to individuals of South Asian origin. An Asian person is twice as likely to be stopped and searched by the police than a white person (Equality and Human Rights Commission 2010) and eleven times more likely to be detained at British ports, including airports, than a white person (Hurrell 2013). As Kalra (2006, p. 234) has noted: ‘Systematic racialisation of BrAsian [British Asian] young people has been a routine aspect of policing these communities since their arrival in Britain’. This process of racialisation has affected, negatively, the policing ‘service’ Asian people within the UK have experienced, as perpetrators and alleged perpetrators, and as victims. For reasons such as these many minority communities, including Asian communities, have historically been considered to have been over-policed and under-protected in the UK. In this context then, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the claim in the Jay Report of agencies including the police being reluctant to act for fear of being labelled ‘racist’ as nothing short of incredulous. To cite some recent examples, fears of being labelled ‘racist’ have certainly not prevented police forces continually failing to meet recruitment standards for Black and Asian staff as set out by the Macpherson Inquiry (Rollock 2009) or failed to halt significant racial disparities in stop and search (Home Office 2017). It also did not prevent Greater Manchester Police from ordering a re-write of an independent report they had commissioned which alleged institutional racism within the force (Scheerhout 2013). The Jay Report made 14 recommendations that did not focus on the importance of race and ethnicity. These recommendations, primarily focussing on improving the practices and policies of agencies including social services, the council and the police, did not make the headlines of the press in the same way as did the issues of race, ethnicity and ‘political correctness’ (see Tufail 2018 for a detailed analysis of the role of the ‘political correctness’ narrative). Indeed, the Jay Report is damning of police actions – or inactions – in failing to intervene and to prevent the sexual abuse and exploitation of young girls. Documented victim testimony shows that police 150

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officers treated them ‘with contempt’ (Jay 2014, p. 1); some examples included girls as young as 13 years of age being blamed for placing themselves in situations where they would be sexually exploited and being described by police officers as ‘undesirables’ not worthy of police protection. Potential ramifications of such misogynistic and dismissive police attitudes to young female victims of rape and sexual assault are laid out by Kelly et al. (2005) in their study of attrition in reported rape cases. They found that police officers and prosecutors overestimated the scale of false allegations, leading to a ‘culture of scepticism’ and that discouragement by the police during investigations was a strong reason for victims ceasing to cooperate. The intense criticism within the Jay Report was not the first time that police failings were identified in the context the sexual exploitation of women and young girls. A police whistleblower in Rochdale revealed, at the height of the media coverage of the events at the time, that police officers in Greater Manchester Police did not take victim allegations of abuse seriously (Deith 2013). Margaret Oliver, a detective constable, resigned in protest after witnessing evidence presented by teenage victims of sexual abuse being ignored by police officers. This theme, of police officers and forces not taking victims of child abuse seriously, continued with criticism of South Yorkshire Police following the Rotherham child abuse cases. A report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate Constabulary, finding that a vulnerable child had been arrested at the home of a sex offender for possessing condoms, surmised that South Yorkshire Police had only a ‘limited understanding’ of the threat posed by sex offenders to vulnerable children (Pidd 2014). An ITV News investigation claimed that several former and serving police officers within Greater Manchester Police had informed them that child abuse was not investigated properly, with one officer alleging a ‘cover up’ of the issue within the force (Geissler 2014). In contrast to the extensive newspaper coverage dedicated to sex crimes committed by individuals from certain minority backgrounds, sexual abuse committed by police officers has rarely made the headlines. A little publicised report commissioned by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (Owers et al. 2012) that received very little coverage in the mainstream press revealed over 50 cases of sexual assault by police in the preceding two-year period. The same report also acknowledged that, as police officers were the perpetrators, under-reporting was a significant problem. However, the report authors understood sexual abuse committed by police officers as a form of corruption. The report did not highlight a culture of misogyny or of institutional failings in preventing the abuse. This is in stark contrast to the discourse and representation surrounding the sexual abuse scandals that took place in Rochdale and Rotherham, dominated by claims that inferior cultures and dangerous, Muslim masculinities were at play. Whether representations of sexual abuse committed by groups of white men vary markedly to the representations of the abuse that took place in Rotherham and Rochdale also requires consideration.

Beyond race and ethnicity: representations of white sex offenders During the period in which the ‘grooming’ child abuse scandals associated to ‘Asian’ or ‘Muslim’ men erupted, a number of similar cases took place where there was considerably less interest in the race, ethnicity or religion of the perpetrators. For instance, in 2010 the Daily Mail reported a story about a group of child abusers apprehended in West Cornwall. The headline ran: ‘Paedophile ring “groomed young girls before repeatedly abusing them in an empty holiday cottage”’ (Daily Mail 2010). The pictures accompanying the headline were of five white men. In the article, no reference was made to the perpetrators’ race or ethnicity, religion or faith; nor is reference made to the race or ethnicity of the victims. In many if not all other aspects, the facts reported in this case were similar to those reported in the Rotherham and Rochdale cases. 151

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In this West Cornwall case, as in the more heavily reported incidents, the young victims of sexual abuse (some as young as five years of age) were groomed and then abused repeatedly over a prolonged period of time. The similarities are evident, yet the differences in how the cases were reported are stark. This was further evidenced by the report of a 13 year old child from North Yorkshire who was sexually abused by thirty men (Daily Mail 2013). The pictures accompanying the story were of white men and yet no mention was made of the race, ethnicity or religion of either the perpetrators or the victim. Furthermore, these two news stories were barely reported in the press, in comparison to the events in Rotherham and Rochdale. There was no public outcry, no inquiries were commissioned, politicians did not comment on them, and the towns involved were not visited by far right groups and fascists wishing to exploit them for political gain (ITV News 2014). In 2012, a year after his death, the former entertainer and BBC employee Jimmy Savile was linked to scores of sex crimes against predominantly young girls and women (BBC News 2012). It is believed Savile may have committed sexual crimes against more than one thousand victims on BBC premises, making him probably the most prolific sexual abuser in British history (Boffey 2014). Greater Manchester Police has admitted that Cyril Smith, former Liberal MP for Rochdale, and also now deceased, should have been charged while he was alive for sexual abuse committed against young boys (Dodd 2012). Operation Yewtree, initiated by the Metropolitan Police after the allegations relating to Savile came to light, has now highlighted the sex crimes of other celebrities, leading to the conviction of well-known public figures such as Max Clifford (Telegraph 2014). All of the men currently known to be under investigation as part of Operation Yewtree, including the individuals mentioned above, are white. Yet their race, ethnicity or religion (or that of their victims) does not feature at all in the reporting of the events. As with the sexual abuse of children carried out by groups of white men in West Cornwall and North Yorkshire, the representation of the events, including the perceived motivating factors behind them, contrast significantly to the representation of the events in Rotherham and Rochdale. One of the common responses to explaining why the events in Rotherham and Rochdale were examined so vividly with regards to race, ethnicity and religion was that the ‘Asian’ or ‘Muslim’ gangs carried out not only sexual but also racist crimes by targeting white victims. This claim, however, does not hold up to scrutiny for the following reasons. First, the overwhelming theme of the Jay Report presents a picture of vulnerable children repeatedly failed by a number of individuals and agencies whose job it was to protect them. Second, the report also makes reference to Asian female victims of sexual abuse, noting that, due to under-reporting from within that community, the true extent of the number of Asian female victims of child sexual abuse is very likely to be higher than is currently known. The Jay Report cites a report by the Deputy Children’s Commissioner for England that dismisses the supposed ‘racist’ nature of sexual attacks by ‘Asian’ or ‘Muslim’ men on white children by stating: one of these myths was that only white girls are victims of sexual exploitation by Asian or Muslim males, as if these men only abuse outside of their own community, driven by hatred and contempt for white females. This belief flies in the face of evidence that shows that those who violate children are most likely to target those who are closest to them and most easily accessible. (Jay 2014, p. 94) Simon Danczuk, the disgraced former Labour MP for Rochdale who was suspended after sending sexually explicit text messages to a teenager, was critical of the role of ‘ethnicity’ being ignored in the wake of the child sexual exploitation scandal in Rochdale. He re-appeared in 152

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the media as the revelations about large scale sexual abuse of children became public and, in an interview alongside a political blogger on Channel 4, aired his views about what he saw as some of the contributory factors that facilitated the abuse. The comments followed on from his analysis of the abuse in Rochdale and he implored that ‘Asian men have a propendency [sic] to be involved in this type of abuse’ (Snow 2014). Danczuk does not elaborate on this any further and neither is he challenged on this viewpoint by the interviewer. While Danczuk was known for his right-wing views on matters relating to race and ethnicity, Labour MP for Rotherham Sarah Champion was regarded as a progressive, very much on the left and linked to causes associated with minority groups. However, Champion attracted national attention in August 2017 when she penned an editorial for right-wing tabloid The Sun titled ‘British Pakistani men ARE raping and exploiting white girls . . . and it’s time we faced up to it’ (Champion 2017). In the article, Champion argues ‘These people are predators and the common denominator is their ethnic heritage’ and in an attempt to seemingly indicate her courage for speaking out, states that she could no longer ‘shy away from doing the right thing by fearing being called a racist’. In the aftermath of this article’s publication, Champion attempted to suggest her comments were taken out of context, though The Sun produced evidence that she approved the article. Champion later stepped down from her role as Shadow Minister for Equalities after being criticised and condemned from a cross-section of commentators including some of her own parliamentary colleagues and a number of anti-racist groups including Rotherham-based human rights charity JUST Yorkshire. The public comments made by both Danczuk and Champion, politicians seemingly from differing political traditions, highlights the durability of racist and Islamophobic discourse which often overlaps between right-wing and liberal commentary (Kumar 2012, 2014). Women Against Rape (WAR), a multi-racial organisation founded in 1976, campaign for women and girls who experience sexual, domestic and racist violence. In their response to the Jay Report and on the point of ethnicity in particular, they note that: Race and ethnicity were used as an excuse to justify the lack of action against the perpetrators. This presumes that the Pakistani community would stand with rapists rather than victims, which is a blatant piece of racism on the part of the police, the council, the MPs and social services. The Asian community was outraged at the perpetrators and the police and politicians protection of the perpetrators. (Women Against Rape 2014) Furthermore, WAR highlight agency and police failings of not investigating allegations of sexual abuse, of not believing victims and, indeed, of even criminalising victims. They also highlight 37 questions the Jay Report failed to address, including the roles of the different agencies involved and seeking clarification on other areas that were addressed. However, the most significant criticism is reserved for South Yorkshire Police and their links to historical and on-going corruption scandals. Men’s sexual violence towards women and young girls has only relatively recently emerged in academic and policy debates, propelled by feminist campaigners. Of central importance in understanding men’s sexual violence is the role of patriarchy and the intersecting power structures related to race, class, age and status (Radford and Stanko 1991). The theme of male power manifested as sexual violence was evident in the abuse committed against vulnerable young girls in Rochdale and Rotherham, in the abuse committed by police officers, and in the abuse committed by celebrities as uncovered by Operation Yewtree, and is the prevalent theme of all sexual violence against women. Radford and Stanko (ibid.) noted that, beyond being regarded as a danger for women, sexual violence is not presented as a gendered issue, effectively serving 153

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to depoliticise the debate which is predominantly concentrated on individual crime prevention. They further argue that the majority of sexual violence, concentrated within the home, is left ignored and yet, when the state does respond, it routinely fails the victims: the bulk of violence to women, that which occurs in private, rarely comes to public attention, is scorned by the police, and the women who ask for police intervention are left neglected and often abused by the very system financed by the state to protect them. (Radford and Stanko 1991, p. 189) The recent revelations of widespread historic and contemporary sexual violence against women and young girls and the woeful official state responses to these crimes would appear to signify that little has changed in how victims experience the criminal justice system. A further theme addressed by the Jay Report and which is a significant and prevalent feature of much sexual violence is the exploitation of vulnerable women and young girls. Jay (2014) noted that many of the young girls sexually exploited in Rotherham were in care at the time and that many perpetrators actively targeted these residents’ units and services. Significant safeguarding failures were highlighted, the circumstances of which echoed with Jimmy Savile’s systematic and widespread abuse carried out within care homes, hospitals and the studios of the BBC. However, it is necessary to go beyond terms such as ‘vulnerability’ which, while important, adopt a politically neutral position. Instead, it is essential to recognise that many of the young girls subjected to sexual violence from men as typified in the Rotherham, Rochdale and Operation Yewtree cases were from impoverished working class backgrounds. As Jones and Novak (1999) stress, systemic failings at the institutional level effectively assist in facilitating the abuse of poor, marginalised children by the powerful: What those in power cannot tolerate is that abuse on the scale revealed in some children’s homes – and it is highly probable in all institutional settings which supposedly care for the vulnerable poor – flows from the systemic disregard which derives from a conception of sections of the population as being worthless. This worthlessness feeds into their powerlessness which in turn provides those in power with a sense of impunity in their behaviour. (Jones and Novak 1999, p. 88) In summarising the fallout of the Rotherham and Rochdale child sexual exploitation scandals, represented within a framework of race and ethnicity, the unpalatable truth may be that the contempt police officers often hold for minority groups was trumped in these instances by their contempt for these vulnerable young girls.

Impact on the Muslim community Following the revelations of the child abuse cases within Rotherham and Rochdale and the intense media scrutiny that accompanied them, numerous examples of Muslim and Asian communities experiencing negative consequences became apparent. For instance, there was the revelation that, in Heywood, Rochdale, a taxi firm owned and operated by a white man was agreeing to requests from customers to send only white drivers (Thompson 2014a). The Asian taxi drivers of the firm reacted with fury to the actions of the owner and a spokesperson for the group commented that: ‘We have done nothing wrong but now we are being treated like paedophiles. You can’t tar us with the same brush.’ Though the taxi firm later reversed its decision (after all of the firm’s Asian taxi drivers walked out in protest), the initial decision of the owner 154

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could be seen as a reaction to the racialised and deviant construction of the Asian taxi driver (and, in this particular instance, an attempt to keep his customers happy by agreeing to their racist requests). This was not the first time that such an event had occurred. For instance, The Telegraph reported that Rochdale Council employed teenagers to spy on taxi drivers (Ward 2013). The article did not specifically mention that Asian taxi drivers would be targeted but, suggestively, the picture accompanying the headline was of the faces of the eight Asian men jailed in Rochdale for sex offences, interspersed with a picture of a young white woman with her back turned. The activity was touted by Rochdale Council as an ‘intelligence gathering’ exercise, with the teenagers looking out for ‘inappropriate behaviour or language’. Like the actions of the taxi firm owner, Rochdale Council, itself under significant political and media pressure, may have succumbed to a crude form of racial profiling in attempting to seek out possible sex offenders. As a result of the anti-Muslim feeling that subsequently developed within Rochdale (partly due to events such as those detailed here), local people set up a group named Rochdale Muslim Community, highlighting the role that the media and politicians have played in stoking tensions within the town. In a press release they commented that: Irresponsible comments from senior local and national politicians are aiding the negative portrayal of the Muslim community. Time and time again some politicians and the media have attempted to equate issues such as grooming and the Muslim community as being one and the same. (Thompson 2014b) Feelings of criminalisation and alienation were also reported in interviews with second generation British Muslims from the Greater Manchester area. These interviews, seeking to examine British Muslims’ views and experiences of the concepts of ‘integration’ and ‘belonging’, coincided with the Rochdale ‘grooming’ scandal and this event and its fallout were mentioned by all participants. For example, Sharaz, a youth worker in his early thirties, spoke of the abuse suffered by Muslims through social media and of how realities such as this had affected his sense of belonging: . . . if you go online and, because people can express their viewpoint anonymously now in this day in age by Twitter and Facebook, and anonymous comments on newspaper websites, you realise the depth of the hatred that people have against Muslims. And then obviously that combination of, you know, reading all the literature and the media and stuff. It makes you feel like you know what, you’re not really wanted. Similar sentiments were also expressed by Shaukat, a 27-year old optician who, in referencing the Rochdale child abuse case, felt that the tag of ‘Muslim’ was inappropriately attached to incidents reported by the media when in fact this information was ‘irrelevant’. Imran, a thirty-one year old British-born teacher was also frustrated with the label of ‘Muslim’ being attached in popular discourse to the ‘grooming’ cases and he compared this to the reporting of child abuse within the church, which did not appear to carry the same stigma. 38-year old Rotherham resident and human resources professional Ahmed spoke of the racist, anti-Muslim backlash and of how this had directly impacted his family members: One of my colleagues went to Alton Towers on the week of the Jay Report and someone called them ‘Rotherham paedos’. Things are said all the time. It’s ‘terrorist’ and that sort of thing. Young people feel quite ostracised because they get called all kinds of things, 155

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especially at school. I know my nephew, who is at college now, spent a lot of time fighting just defending himself and before you know it, he is excluded and the other person is excluded. But that doesn’t help. It has impacted on his education. Another familiar feature of the fallout of the Rotherham child abuse scandal has been the call, from non-Muslims and Muslims alike, to condemn the abuse. For instance, Nazir Afzal, the former Crown Prosecution Service lead on sexual violence against women and children, argued that there was no religious basis for the abuse carried out in Rotherham and that the role of ethnicity has been overplayed in the media (Gentleman 2014). However, Afzal did inform The Guardian reporter that he had hoped for more ‘vocal’ condemnation of the actions of the abusers. Amjad Bashir (2014), a former MEP for the populist anti-immigrant UKIP wrote in The Telegraph: ‘I am urging the community to get together to say these men do not represent us. They should be seen for what they are and held to account. We who come from Pakistan abhor and hold in contempt these people.’ This appeal for Pakistani or Muslim groups to apologise is typical of other calls made for these communities to condemn the behaviour of others that had nothing to do with them (Tufail and Poynting 2016). The most severe impact on Muslim communities in Rotherham, however, has been the rapid increase of violent Islamophobia, culminating in the killing of local penisoner and visible Muslim, Mushin Ahmed. Ahmed was beaten to death by two white men while walking home from early morning prayers; his killers repeatedly referred to him as a ‘groomer’ during the assault and were both later convicted of his murder (Tufail 2018). Several interviewees referred to the climate of Islamophobia that had contributed to collectively blaming Rotherham’s Muslim communities for the child sexual abuse scandal, and of how this had been fanned by not only right-wing tabloid newspapers, but local elites including elected officials. This anti-Muslim abuse, often violent, affected not just local Muslim men, but women and children too in locations including schools, shopping centres, places of worship and the workplace.

Conclusion The frequent calls for Muslim and Asian communities to apologise for and condemn the behaviour and activities of apparent members of those communities is not limited to recent examples following the child sexual exploitation scandals in Rotherham and Rochdale. Indeed, there have been repeated demands from newspapers, political figures and ‘community leaders’ compelling Muslims to speak out in opposition to events ranging from reports of British Muslims travelling to fight in Syria to allegations of ‘Islamist takeovers’ of schools. These demands are not simply spontaneous requests for an apology following a crime, atrocity or supposedly regressive practice: rather, they effectively serve as a ‘pledge of allegiance’ to the state, nation and the hegemonic order. This order, in which British Muslims occupy an inferior position to non-Muslim British citizens, is predicated on the extent to which an individual or community is ‘integrated’, or not. As Gargi Bhattacharyya (2008, p. 74) notes: ‘Minority communities are challenged to prove their allegiance and integration, however long they have been settled in the ‘host’ nation’. This is particularly the case with the Muslim communities of Britain who, for over a decade, have occupied a position as the dangerous minority and the primary subject group of counter-terrorism policy, legislation and state surveillance (Gilmore 2012; Pantazis and Pemberton 2009). According to Bhattacharyya, the othering of the Muslim male has intensified through the period of the ‘war on terror’, with a focus on perceived (inferior) cultural difference and (illiberal) attitudes to sex: 156

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The shift from what I am describing as ‘black’ to ‘brown’ myths is centred around the implied dangers of non-western cultures. There is a reworking of long-running racist myths – so the black rapist becomes the brown man from a backward and misogynistic culture, anti-feminist, sexually frustrated by traditional culture, addicted to honour killing and viewing women as tradable objects. (Bhattacharyya 2008, p. 97) That such representation has played out against the backdrop of Rotherham and Rochdale is beyond doubt. This is not, however, an isolated issue of a media hostile to minorities reporting similar cases of sexual violence towards women and young girls with alarming difference. Rather, as with the cases highlighted in this chapter, political figures and official reports have contributed greatly to rousing fears of a racialised threat of Muslim men towards white women. However, I argue that the anti-Muslim sentiment fostered in recent times is not simply the preserve of conservatives or of the far right. Following Kumar (2012, 2014), I contend that liberals and liberal institutions play a key role in furthering and legitimating anti-Muslim racism as evidenced by effectively correlating race and ethnicity to the sexual exploitation and violence cases in Rotherham and Rochdale. However, this is far from the only instance concerning Muslims to be exploited for political leverage. As Hussein and Poynting (2017) remind us, Islamophobia is now mainstream to the point of becoming ‘common-sense’, with a range of social and political issues including immigration, criminality and the treatment of women, examined and explained by regular reference to a supposedly degenerative Muslim culture. This chapter has demonstrated how Islamophobia at the level of media and politics has been effectively utilised to collectively blame and stigmatise whole Muslim communties for the crimes of a few, shifting national attention and public debate away from the core issues of violence against women and resulting in violent Islamophobia at the local level. Muslim ethnic groups in other parts of the world have also been racialised as violent sexual deviants in countries including France and Australia (Grewal 2012, 2017; Ticktin 2008) highlighting the globalised nature of contemporary Islamophobia. Within the context of Rotherham and Rochdale, the conjured image is of the dark Muslim male, sexually charged, violent, refusing to integrate and serving as an embodiment of a backward religion and dangerous, inferior culture. This (mis)representation, indulged in by far-right, conservative and liberal elites and institutions, has had serious and deleterious consequences for Muslim communities which have experienced isolation, alienation, racist attacks and criminalisation as a result.

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Home Office. 2017. Stop and Search. Home Office, 10 October. Retrieved from www.ethnicityfacts-figures.service.gov.uk/crime-justice-and-the-law/policing/stop-and-search/latest (accessed 20 February 2018). Hurrell, K. 2013. An Experimental Analysis of Examinations and Detentions under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Briefing Paper 8. Manchester: Equality and Human Rights Commission. Retrieved from www. equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/publication_pdf/BP%208%20research_briefing_8_final_ v2.pdf (accessed 17 November 2017). ITV News. 2014. EDL stage protest in Rotherham. ITV News, 13 September. Retrieved from www. itv.com/news/calendar/update/2014-09-13/riot-police-control-far-right-protestors-in-rotherham/ (accessed 17 November 2017). Jay, A. 2014. Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham. Rotherham: Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council. Retrieved from www.rotherham.gov.uk/downloads/file/1407/ independent_inquiry_cse_in_rotherham (accessed 12 November 2017). Johnston, I. and Kavanagh, J. 2013. More than 160 arrested at EDL Tower Hamlets march. The Independent, 8 September. Retrieved from www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/more-than-160arrested-at-edl-tower-hamlets-march-8803110.html (accessed 20 February 2018). Jones, C. and Novak, T. 1999. Poverty, Welfare and the Disciplinary State. London: Routledge. Kalra, V. S. 2006. Policing diversity: Racialisation and the criminal justice system. In N. Ali, V. S. Kalra and S. Sayyid (eds), A Postcolonial People: South Asians in Britain, pp. 234–243. London: Hurst and Company. Kelly, L., Lovett, J. and Regan, L. 2005. A Gap or a Chasm? Attrition in Reported Rape Cases. Home Office Research Study 293. London: Home Office. Kumar, D. 2012. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books. Kumar, D. 2014. Mediating racism: the new McCarthyites and the matrix of Islamophobia. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 7, 9–26. Kundnani, A. 2014. The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism and the Domestic War on Terror. London: Verso. Morgan, G. and Poynting, S. (eds). 2012. Global Islamophobia: Muslims and Moral Panic in the West. Farnham: Ashgate. Norfolk, A. 2012. Police files reveal vast child protection scandal. The Times, 24 September. Retrieved from www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661.ece (accessed 12 November 2017). Owers, A. (chair) et al. 2014. The Abuse of Police Powers to Perpetrate Sexual Violence. London: Independent Police Complaints Commission. Retrieved from www.ipcc.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Documents/ research_stats/abuse_of_police_powers_to_perpetrate_sexual_violence.PDF (accessed 17 November 2017). Pantazis, C. and Pemberton, S. 2009. From the ‘old’ to the ‘new’ suspect community: Examining the impacts of recent UK counter-terrorist legislation. The British Journal of Criminology, 49(5), 646–666. Pearson, A. 2014. Oxford grooming gang: we will regret ignoring Asian thugs who target white girls. The Telegraph, 15 May. Retrieved from www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10060570/ Oxford-grooming-gang-We-will-regret-ignoring-Asian-thugs-who-target-white-girls.html (accessed 17 November 2017). Pidd, H. 2014. South Yorkshire police under fire for failing to protect vulnerable children. The Guardian, 30 September. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/30/south-yorkshirepolice-rotherham-child-abuse (accessed 18 November 2017). Poynting, S. and Mason, V. 2007. The resistible rise of Islamophobia: anti-Muslim racism in the UK and Australia before September 11 2001. Journal of Sociology, 43(61), 61–86. Radford, J. and Stanko, E. A. 1991. Violence against women and children: the contradictions of crime control under patriarchy. In D. Cowell and K. Stenson (eds), The Politics of Crime Control, pp. 186–202. London: Sage. Rollock, N. 2009. The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Ten Years On: An Analysis of the Literature. London: Runnymede Trust. Retrieved from www.runnymedetrust.org/uploads/publications/pdfs/Stephen LawrenceInquiryReport-2009.pdf (accessed 17 November 2017). Scheerhout, J. 2013. Revealed: GMP ordered report on police discrimination – then ordered a rewrite to dilute it. Manchester Evening News, 28 January. Retrieved from www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/ news/greater-manchester-news/revealed-greater-manchester-police-ordered-6636459 (accessed 17 November 2017). 159

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Snow, J. 2014. Rotherham authorities ‘put community cohesion before rape’. Channel 4 News, 27 August. Retrieved from www.channel4.com/news/rotherham-abuse-race-community-before-child-rape-video (accessed 18 November 2017). Telegraph. 2014. Max Clifford: Operation Yewtree claims first conviction. The Telegraph, 28 April. Retrieved from www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10793442/Max-Clifford-OperationYewtree-claims-first-conviction.html (accessed 17 November 2017). Thompson, D. 2014a. ‘We’re being treated like paedophiles!’ Asian cabbies protest after boss reveals he supplies white drivers on request. Manchester Evening News, 24 October. Retrieved from www. manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/were-being-treated-like-paedo philes-7996762 (accessed 18 November 2017). Thompson, D. 2014b. Rochdale’s Muslim community say they face ‘unprecedented and unacceptable’ racism after town’s grooming scandal. Manchester Evening News, 18 November. Retrieved from www. manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/rochdales-muslim-community-sayface-8131825 (accessed 18 November 2017). Ticktin, M. 2008. Sexual violence as the language of border control: where French feminist and antiimmigrant rhetoric meet. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 33 (4), 863–889. Tufail, W. 2018. Media, state and ‘political correctness’: the racialisation of the Rotherham child sexual abuse scandal. In M. Bhatia, S. Poynting and W. Tufail (eds), Media, Crime, Racism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Tufail, W. and Poynting, S. 2013. ‘A common outlawness’: criminalisation of Muslim minorities in the UK and Australia. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2 (3), 43–54. Tufail, W. and Poynting, S. 2016. Muslim and dangerous: ‘grooming’ and the politics of racialisation. In D. Pratt and R. Woodlock (eds), Fear of Muslims? International Perspectives on Islamophobia. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Ward, V. 2013. Teens asked to spy on taxi drivers to avoid sex ring scandal. The Telegraph, 25 March. Retrieved from www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9953385/Teens-asked-to-spy-on-taxidrivers-to-avoid-sex-ring-scandal.html (accessed 18 November 2017). Women Against Rape 2014. Child Rape in Rotherham: Questions Rape Survivors, Parents and the Public Want Answered. Retrieved from www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/women-against-rape/child-rapein-rotherham-questions-rape-survivors-parents-and-public-wa (accessed 21 November 2017). Yorkshire Post. 2010. Five men guilty in Rotherham Asian grooming case. Yorkshire Post, 4 November. www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/main-topics/local-stories/five-men-guilty-in-rotherham-asiangrooming-case-1-3024198 (accessed 12 November 2017).

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Introduction The Scottish context has been characterised as an easier environment for Muslims to integrate in compared to England, due to lower fear of terrorism, lower settlement numbers and the perceived positive attitudes of Scottish people, for example friendliness, sociability and a welcoming disposition (Homes et al. 2010). Furthermore, the relationship between the Muslim and non-Muslim populations in Scotland have benefited from the specific socio-historical settlement of South Asian communities in the country, who did not compete for jobs with the majority Scottish people when working as pedlars in the mid-1920s and later when entering education and moving into self-employment, who privileged house ownership and private renting and, therefore, avoided competition for public services in the 1950s and 1960s, who have so far not created major troubles and whose involvement in business has helped promote a positive public image (Maan 1992). Moreover, in Scotland Anglophobia may displace Islamophobia (Hussain and Miller 2006), in a context in which English people encounter barriers to belonging due to their national identities (McIntosh et al. 2008), and feed anxieties and insecurities among Scottish people (Bond et al. 2010). At the same time, the Scottish media tend to be less belligerent than the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and The Sun, which, among them, seem to either reflect or form English attitudes. Furthermore, the national flag and expressions of allegiance to it have not become associated with a code for racial exclusiveness. Lastly, the policy messages emerging from Holyrood, and particularly from the governing Scottish National Party (SNP), in support of immigration as a way to address demographic challenges and achieve sustainable economic growth in Scotland resonate in stark opposition to Westminster’s measures to restrict immigration (McCollum et al. 2014). Nevertheless, the daily realities in which Scottish Muslims live are diverse, fluid and complex. In fact, such realities also include prejudice and are coloured by the insecurities that sustain the cultural barriers between Muslims and non-Muslims in a context in which the former might perceive the latter to hold more negative views of them than they do (Homes et al. 2010). The differences between the two constituencies that host the two largest Muslim communities, Glasgow and Edinburgh, are a reminder of the rather inhomogeneous and patchy experiences 161

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of being a Muslim in Scotland. On the one hand, Glasgow hosts the most ethnically segregated area in Scotland – namely, Pollokshields. On the other hand, Edinburgh presents itself as a socio-economically and culturally distinctive town. Unlike Glasgow, Edinburgh’s smaller, ethnically diverse – albeit of majority Pakistani origin or heritage – Muslim population is scattered throughout the town, a socio-spatial factor which might favour integration, if contact theory (Allport 1954) – ‘the greater the familiarity, the lower the level of prejudice’ (Field 2007, p. 465) – holds true. The community gathers around ten official mosques, which tend to serve different ethno-cultural and theological orientations of the Muslim community, although many people attend the main city mosque, which is located in the central, student area and is a symbolic reminder of the key role that Islam plays in the social geography of contemporary Western societies. The next pages will elaborate on the history of discriminatory attitudes towards visible minorities and Muslims in Scotland and will subsequently focus on Muslims’ specific day-today experiences in the fragile sociopolitical climate that has followed the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.1 In this sense, the increased visibility of Muslim religious identities will be posited to be a driver for the perceived stigmatisation during interactions with non-Muslims in everyday life and also at loci of security, such as airports, where Muslims feel an acute sense of social inequality, powerlessness and humiliation.

Discrimination against Scottish Muslims Exclusionary practices based on racialised stereotypes against ‘coloured’ people have been reproduced in Scotland for centuries, at least since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: once fostered by tales of missionaries and Scottish soldiers returning from India and Africa; then exemplified by colour bans in dancing halls in the 1920s; and nowadays expressed through direct or indirect discrimination in various spheres of life, for example employment, housing and sociocultural entertainments (Wardak 2000). The post-9/11 discrimination against Muslims represents the consolidation of a shift from primarily racial to ethno-religious prejudice dating back to the Rushdie Affair in 1989, when Muslims across Great Britain, including Scotland (Maan 2014), started mobilising, being recognised and being dealt with not only as an ethnic group, but also, and especially, as a religious group (Bolognani 2009; Marranci 2008). In the wake of 9/11, Scottish Muslims became the main ‘representatives’ of religious diversity within the Scottish landscape, a fate that they share with Muslims south of the border. Clegg and Rosie argue that ‘the attack on the World Trade Center in September 2001 marked a turning point from predominantly racial intolerance and abuse towards more religiously motivated attacks. People wearing distinctive religious dress or symbols are a particular target’ (Clegg and Rosie 2005). In the same study, all faith groups perceived Muslims to be the community most under pressure, especially after 9/11. Among the targets of the post-9/11 retaliation are also members of other ethnic and religious minority groups (for example, Sikh) who might mistakenly be considered Muslim (Qureshi 2007) and who have also been stopped and searched by the police based on the belief that they are Muslim (Parmar 2011). Discriminatory and racist attacks on Muslim people and symbols sharply increased after 9/11 (Hopkins 2007). For example, in Edinburgh a mosque was vandalised less than a month after the terrorist attacks on the United States and damages were valued at £20,000. In Glasgow, eggs were thrown at a mosque and a Muslim woman was spat at on the street (Hopkins and Smith 2008). In Lanarkshire, the contractor working on Central Lanarkshire Mosque received death threats and had to resign from the job in late 2002 (Maan 2014). In 2003, a group of young white people attacked a young Asian man who was walking to his local mosque in Glasgow. 162

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Soon afterwards, gang problems and violent clashes between Asians and white people erupted in Pollokshields, including ‘tit-for-tat fire bombings of shops and cars’ (Sarwar 2016, p. 8). After the London bombings in 2005, Edinburgh experienced vandalism directed against one of its mosques and a serious attack on a young Scottish Pakistani man (Qureshi 2007), in a context in which Scotland as a whole suffered from increasing discriminatory treatment towards Muslims in schools and on the street (Maan 2014). Similarly, following a series of IslamicState-inspired terrorist attacks that killed 129 people and injured 433 in Paris on 13 November 2015, the Scottish Muslim community suffered from increased racially and religiously motivated crimes. Police Scotland reportedly recorded over sixty religiously motivated crimes in the weeks after the attack (Leask 2016). The Strathclyde University Muslim Student Association received death threats (Brooks 2015). A cultural centre used by Muslims in Glasgow was firebombed (Gray 2015). The owner of a takeaway in Fife was assaulted and an Asian woman and her child were physically attacked (Duffy 2015). Several Scottish people believe that the attempted bombing of Glasgow Airport in July 2007 increased intolerance towards Muslims (Homes et al. 2010). Moreover, almost half of Scottish people seem to believe that Scotland would lose its identity if the Muslim population increased, while 37 per cent consider Islam to be incompatible with Scottish life (ibid.). Approximately one in four (23 per cent) and one in seven (15 per cent) Scottish people, respectively, would be unhappy if a family member formed a relationship with a Muslim and consider Muslims to be unsuitable as primary school teachers (Ormston et al. 2011). Research conducted by Kidd and Jamieson (2011) confirms the fact that global events have instigated racial and religious discrimination. This is considered to be ‘a double burden’ since ‘Muslims experience unfair treatment and discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity and race, as well as in relation to their religious identity’ (ibid., p. 31). Kidd and Jamieson also notice that unfriendliness and hostility towards Muslims have been fairly common in Muslim areas of residence and on the street, while women have reported intrusive attention from men or sexual harassment. The 2007 protests against the provision of a plot of land for a new Muslim cemetery at Windlaw Farm near Carmunnock, a village in the suburb of Glasgow (Maan 2014), demonstrate the prejudice against visible Islamic symbols. The social context is nonetheless not too gloomy and hope rests on the large percentage of Scottish people, 77 per cent, who consider themselves not to be racist at all (Scottish Executive 2006), and the 66 per cent who have positive views of Muslims (Homes et al. 2010). Overall, racism in Scotland is declining, while racial prejudice is falling across Great Britain (Ford 2008) – although this assessment may change in a post-Brexit context – and over seven in ten British people hold positive views towards Muslims (Pew Global Attitudes Project 2015). It is true that statistics recorded by the police in Scotland in 2013/2014 show a 4 per cent increase in racist incidents (4,807) compared to 2012/2013 (4,628) (Scottish Government 2013). But much of this increase is due to higher numbers of incidents involving white British people (1,423 in 2013/2014 compared to 1,139 in 2012/2013) rather than ethnic minorities. These figures must also be contextualised within an overall trend of decreasing numbers of racist incidents recorded by the police between 2006/2007 and 2013/2014 (Scottish Government 2015b). Yet, Pakistanis (20 per cent – that is, 1,107) and Bangladeshis (1 per cent – that is, 41), two predominantly Muslim ethnic groups,2 still constitute 21 per cent (1,148) of those who report racist incidents. They also contribute towards 35 per cent of the total population of wider Asian origin (Bangladeshi, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani and other Asian) who are victimised and complain about racism across the country. Urban areas tend to record higher numbers of racist incidents. In fact, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen are the three cities recording the highest proportion of racist incidents, respectively 20.7, 19.2 and 11.9 racist incidents for every 10,000 163

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people in their local authority areas against a mean of nine racist incidents per 10,000 people in Scotland. Dundee is in line with the mean of nine racist incidents for every 10,000 people (Scottish Government 2015b). Religiously aggravated offences (Scottish Government 2015a and 2016) for conduct derogatory towards Islam under Section 74 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003 oscillated between fifteen and one hundred and thirty-four charges in the years between 2010 and 2015. Although a Scottish Government (2016) survey recorded an increase in reported offences, under-reporting still constitutes an issue (Meer 2015). Similarly, the problematic nature of disentangling religion from race and ethnicity makes it hard to provide an accurate picture of anti-Muslim sentiments. Episodes of abuse and discrimination against Muslims have increased since 9/11 (Saeed 2015) and, as a consequence, daily encounters between Muslims and non-Muslims have suffered. Visible markers of Muslimness increase the likelihood of suffering from discrimination, harassment, marginalisation and employment difficulties. When coupled with the maintenance or adoption of foreign ethnic and/or Muslim norms and mannerisms, markers of Muslimness play an important role in reinforcing exclusionary processes on a cultural and social basis and placing Muslims within a discriminated against category. Furthermore, low-quality interactions between Muslims and non-Muslims promote non-positive behavioural intentions towards the former (Hutchison and Rosenthal 2011). In a study conducted by Hopkins et al. (2007), it appears that most Muslims would welcome increased contact with non-Muslim communities; however, it is necessary that people interacting with them do not misrecognise their identities or disrespect them under the influence of socially widespread prejudices and stereotypes.

Discrimination in everyday Scottish life A consistent pattern observed throughout fieldwork with Muslims in Edinburgh relates to the ways in which distinctive body markers and visible ‘signs of Muslimness’ (for example, skin colour, beard, traditional clothes and hijab) may position them within an a priori stigmatised group. Other studies have found that ‘young Muslim men who have a beard and wear Islamic dress are likely to experience discrimination and marginalisation compared with those who do not’ (Hopkins 2009, p. 307). In this sense, the public display of negatively perceived cultural diversity could class Muslims as ‘discreted’ individuals through mere visual contact (for example, seeing a ‘coloured’ man who wears a long beard or a woman who wears a hijab) and without requiring communication to establish such diversity (Goffman 1990 [1963]). In this sense, the essentialisation of Muslimness may preclude the use of front stage techniques of self-presentation (Goffman 1990 [1959]) that would otherwise help Muslims to positively negotiate their multiple identities across different sociocultural spaces, ease interactions with non-Muslims and define their own social positioning on a more equal level. The way in which signs, or visible markers, of Muslimness can cast Muslims outside the realm of socially power-balanced relationships and accepted cultural boundaries due to the symbolic power of race and religion to signal social differences is also identified by Hopkins (2004a, 2004b) in his study of Pakistanis in Glasgow and Edinburgh in the early 2000s and this broadly follows other British (Spalek 2002; Allen 2014, 2015) and European (Choudhury et al. 2006) studies on the subject. Kyriakides et al.’s (2009) research in Glasgow further confirms that, when people only display ‘foreign Muslim signs’, extensively including foreign accents and non-mainstream mannerisms, these are perceived to be culturally problematic. However, the authors argue that when people utilise hybridised codes of cultural belonging, which rely upon both Scottish cultural norms, such as command of English and a Scottish accent (Virdee et al. 2006), and Muslim cultural norms, they can make claims of national belonging and be more easily included in society. Muslim hyper-visibility 164

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forms both a trigger for ethno-religious discrimination and a catalyst for positive interest in, and support of, Muslimness. Ghedi, a Somali man, encapsulates the reality of being a member of a visible minority, particularly being a Muslim in a post-9/11 world, and the shift from a racial to an ethno-religious understanding of his identity: Being a Muslim in Edinburgh has been difficult compared to back home. Over there, the majority of people are Muslim so it ‘forces’ you to be a Muslim. Here, Muslims are a minority and there is a minority issue. For example, people define Muslims by how you dress. If you are a Muslim man and you wear a shalvar kameez, it says that you are a Muslim even before you talk. If you wear a turban, again it is the same thing. If you have a beard, that is again the same thing. At the beginning, Muslims were treated as a racial group: people would say to you, ‘Paki’, as happened to me a number of times. Then, 9/11 changed things. If you have a beard and wear a kameez, they call you ‘Bin Laden’. (Ghedi, Somali man in his mid-fifties) A survey conducted with over 500 black and minority ethnic (BME) people in Scotland confirms that religion (44 per cent) and ethnicity (82 per cent) are perceived to drive discriminatory attitudes (Meer 2015). Of the same cohort, 31 per cent reported having experienced discrimination in Scotland between 2010 and 2015, particularly while using transport services and in the areas of employment and education. Surveys conducted in England and Wales also demonstrate that Muslims are among the most victimised group in racially motivated hate crimes (Corcoran et al. 2015). Leaving aside loci of security and interactions with the police for now, the workplace and the job market also appear to be areas of concern in other larger studies of Scottish Muslims (see Kidd and Jamieson 2011), since visibly presenting oneself as a Muslim is perceived as a potential hindrance in both reaching certain positions and securing a job. A few respondents in Edinburgh mentioned the absence of, if not the impossibility for society to even conceive, Muslims in positions of power due to the very essence of them being visibly Muslim. In other words, they believed that institutional discrimination could potentially hamper Muslims’ opportunities to access services and reach positions of authority and leadership. Arif, a Canadian Bangladeshi man, stresses this issue. He alleges that discrimination in Scotland is deeply institutionalised and seriously affects the life goals of highly educated and motivated individuals of ethnic minority origin. Problems with accessing services are also recorded in other research, where Muslims believe themselves to have experienced ‘greater barriers to [national] health service use in terms of the (negative) attitudes of receptionists and service opening hours compared with non-Muslims’ (Love et al. 2011, p. 3). Similarly, Raza, a Scottish Pakistani man in his early twenties, thinks that being a Muslim is a major impediment to reaching certain positions of institutional authority and leadership, as they are already disadvantaged in the labour market. This line of thought is supported by a Muslim who works at the headquarters of the National Health Service in Edinburgh. He reports that there have been no Muslim directors or chief executives since his employment there. Some evidence to support these arguments is contained in a report on Scottish local councils, which found that the workforce does not reflect the size of the ethnic minority community (Hussain and Ishaq 2008). The Scottish Government also claimed that the country has no head or deputy head teacher from an ethnic minority background (BBC News 2015). Raza, a Scottish Pakistani man, is one of the very few respondents who maintain that exclusion, in this case from a position of authority, does not necessarily signify discrimination. Muslim exclusion from positions of leadership could derive from many other factors ranging from mere statistical reasons (non-Muslims largely outnumber Muslims in society) to meritocratic reasons. 165

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Some other interviewees reported difficulties in negotiating their need to pray, for example being requested not to perform prayers during work time, or feeling ashamed to pray whenever non-Muslims are around in case they react in a negative fashion. Sarmad reported issues with a colleague who would interrupt and verbally abuse him during prayer breaks in the workplace. Nasha recounted a personal experience as a volunteer at a Christian caring organisation, which she had decided to leave after being explicitly requested not to perform prayers at work. The nature of Muslimness interplays with social understandings of Islam as a religion, a culture and an ideology that some non-Muslims find hard to conceptually and practically integrate within the Scottish sociocultural system. In her own negative experience, Nasha was not able to negotiate her right to pray during lunch break, because prayers were allegedly considered to be offensive by the Christian organisation. Eventually, she had to resign. In the bleakest scenario, through the normative regulation of ethnic and religious values that are different from the dominant values of a cultural constituency, ‘certain cultural practices of the minority cultural groups become [social and cultural] crimes, subject to sanctions and penalties imposed by the dominant group or elite’ (Lemert 1972, p. 33). Nasha’s experience demonstrates the potential for Muslim-related practices to be subject to discrimination from a majority that defines the boundaries of Muslim engagement with society. Other respondents argued that visible Muslim identities drive stigmatisation and exclusion. Alena mentioned occasions on which she had felt that the discrepancy between her virtual image and her real image could be a key impediment to job hunting. In other words, she claimed that she had routinely managed to make job contacts over the phone thanks to her Western-sounding name but had failed face-to-face interviews due to her hijab and her requests to perform prayers on Fridays: Looking for jobs was a big hit for me. I could not help thinking that the hijab was the way you do not get jobs and I do not like to think that way but felt like that I was forced to think about it that way. I was also trying to tell myself that there is something about me that is not right for this job and not the hijab and all the rest but I also thought about the hijab. I was fine on paper and I used to get lots of interviews for jobs. But then I would go for the interview and would never get the job. I think that, because my name is Alena, they think I am okay but when they meet me everything changes. (Alena, Palestinian woman in her late twenties) Several other interviewees shared similar concerns in line with the findings of a study conducted by Kidd and Jamieson (2011) in the Central Belt that registered ‘fears about the possibility of facing . . . discrimination when looking for work’ (ibid., p. 52). Rebecca, a fully covered Scottish female convert to Islam, also laments a mismatch between the expected identity that she communicates during phone interactions and the visual identity that people ascertain during face-to-face interactions. The fact that visibly displaying religious symbols affects interactions with Scottish people is not simply a perception but finds support in the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2010 (Ormston et al. 2011). Of the surveyed respondents, 23 per cent maintained that a Muslim woman being interviewed for a job involving contact with customers should be asked by the prospective employer to remove her hijab at work. A few interviewees shared other, similar experiences. Arif recounted his own experience as a temporary worker in a legal aid office where he believed he had been constantly assigned the hardest admin tasks, while his colleagues had been quickly promoted and had been given better duties. Akhtar pinpoints this very issue by arguing that Muslims could receive differential treatment simply because of their religious and ethnic identities: 166

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I think that sometimes, even if you have the best qualifications out there, they say that you do not get a job because you are not what they are looking for or they tell you a simple excuse that can be applicable to anyone. However, because of the way things are, I would not be chosen because I am Pakistani, because I am Muslim. It is not necessarily right to do it but I do not blame it either. This is because of the ways the media perceive Islam, the way in which things have been done. (Akhtar, Scottish Pakistani man in his early twenties) Akhtar’s words resonate with wider community perceptions of an a priori prejudice towards Muslims and Islam, which is often blamed on the media and far-right political parties. There is a diffuse sense of British media negativity around Muslims that some Scottish people accept uncritically. Encounters between Muslims and non-Muslims reveal the underlying sense of discomfort that some Scottish people have developed towards Muslims in a post-9/11 world. It is true that Muslims feel fairly safe when dealing with non-Muslim friends and acquaintances because these people are able to avoid either stereotyping Muslim communities or making them pay a penalty for the wrongdoing of a tiny minority of Islamist terrorists. Large-scale studies indicate that only 20 per cent of Scottish people hold negative views of Muslims (Homes et al. 2010) and that those who discriminate against Muslims are typically low-skilled male workers, pensioners, elders and Conservatives (Hussain and Miller 2006; see also Ormston et al. 2011). However, the display of a visibly Muslim identity, particularly in a post-9/11 world, affects the interaction between Muslims and non-Muslims. Hussain and Miller’s (2006) study of Pakistanis in Scotland reveals that the majority of their respondents (61 per cent) believed ordinary people to be the most prejudiced Scots. Only a minority (23 per cent) of their respondents mentioned politicians and officials. Akhtar sheds further light on the perceived hostility suffered from Scottish people: Obviously due to recent circumstances it is more and more difficult for me to express myself as a person, not so much of a Pakistani background, but of a Muslim background. It has become more and more difficult. For example, my sister wears the hijab. I know that these are little things that people might perceive as silly but, like, when she gets on the bus people look at her. I know how it was before and I know how it is now and if you ask anybody they will tell you the same thing – I found myself being treated differently. (Akhtar, Scottish Pakistani man in his early twenties) Certain expressions of cultural prejudice, such as staring at members of other ethnic groups on the bus, are often problematic to assess and evaluate objectively, and can relate to forms of behaviour other than pure racism (see also Kidd and Jamieson 2011). But discriminatory attitudes, such as being called a ‘terrorist’ or a ‘Paki’ and other forms of verbal abuse, are unequivocally suffered by many, predominantly male, visibly Muslim people in Edinburgh and across Scotland (see Kidd and Jamieson 2011). Verbal abuse tends to take place on the street, which forms the location recording the highest number of general racist incidents between 2004/2005 and 2013/2014 (Scottish Government 2015a). This finding is in line with Kidd and Jamieson’s (2011) study, which reports Scottish Muslims’ experiences of hostility and unfriendliness both on the streets and in local neighbourhoods. But Kidd and Jamieson also notice more positive relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims, particularly in colleges and schools. This element should not be underestimated. It is well known that the formation of national identities passes through the educational system and that ‘in Scotland it is one of the three national 167

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institutions which were preserved in the Union of 1707 and continued to preserve a sense of Scottish “national” identity while not colliding with British state identity’ (Weber n.d., p. 8). Scottish Muslims often claim that, besides the media and the post-9/11 climate, the low exposure to ethno-religious diversity of Scottish people living in some parts of the country (see Kidd and Jamieson 2011) is to blame for discriminatory attitudes. Troublingly, some Muslims are routinely victims of serious abuse, such as assaults, as happened to one of Arif’s friends. Other similarly serious incidents involved a female respondent having her hijab pulled off on the street and a mosque being vandalised in the aftermath of 9/11. A study conducted between 2013 and 2015 and involving 100 Muslims across Scotland (Hopkins et al. 2015) further recorded several incidents of verbal and physical abuse suffered by Scottish Muslims. In a notable incident, a man entered Taj Madina mosque in Dundee and destroyed framed prayers (BBC News 2016). On the positive side, many Muslims who took part in both the author’s own primary research and in Hussain and Miller’s (2006) study perceive discrimination to be less serious than in England. Yet, ethno-religious discrimination, even when it results only in a few minor incidents, appears to take an emotional and psychological toll on Muslims. Muslims are often apt to consider the complexities of their fragile position in society, take into account the generally positive experiences that they have had and avoid letting a few negative experiences shape their overall perceptions of life in Scotland. But some Muslims have been badly affected by perceived and real discrimination. People such as Arif are resigned to the idea that discriminatory incidents are routine experiences in Scotland. But while ordinary everyday experiences are not homogeneous across the Scottish Muslim population, Muslims’ perceptions of discrimination at airports converge. As crucial loci of security, where any post-9/11 worry about an impending Islamist terrorist attack shows itself, airports are the most contested social spaces among the Scottish Muslim community.

Discrimination at Scottish airports Stories of negative experiences at Scottish airports abound among the predominantly male Muslims interviewed and surveyed across different studies: primary research conducted by the author in Edinburgh; wider Scottish research conducted by Kidd and Jamieson (2011); and media reports (Herald Scotland 2011; Naysmith 2015). Many Edinburgh Muslims have either themselves experienced or know relatives or friends who have been subjected to perceived undue targeting or harsh treatment when leaving from or arriving at Scottish airports. In 2011, Humza Yousaf and Aamer Anwar publicly lamented that South Asian men had been regularly stopped at airports (Herald Scotland 2011). This has become a typical narrative among Scottish Muslims. Muslims often consider ethno-religious profiling to be a main driver for airport checks and stops and searches and question the operational randomness of security activities. They believe that Muslims qua Muslims are targeted due to the fears associated with their cultural and religious difference: I have never been stopped at the train station but I have been stopped and searched at the airport. It is always a ‘random’ [sarcastic] search. . . . Random search – how come I am always the one randomly stopped? (Babar, young Scottish Pakistani man in his mid-twenties) Stop and search at airports is a widespread issue. People are getting stopped. We get stopped. We see it ourselves. Not once but twice, three times. We see it a number of times and then we realise that it has become part of our life. The concern is the actual questioning and the 168

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perception that it puts on other passengers on the same flight. People think that you are being stopped for a reason. (Nasir, Scottish Pakistani man in his early thirties) Within the social space that is constructed around the perceived stigmatisation of visible diversity, Muslims could end up being placed in a position of unequal standing before police and security officers. These actors operate as the human tools of the securitisation of Muslims and represent what Wacquant (2009) argues are the law and order wing of the state, which employs penal means to deal with social ‘problems’. Other research conducted across Scotland confirms that Muslims believe that the ‘frequency and nature of airport stops signals that . . . [they] are targeted as a group and regarded as a dangerous “other”’ (Blackwood 2015, p. 258). The securitisation of Muslims has produced several effects. In line with the findings of Blackwood et al.’s (2012) study, these effects converge in a mixture of disempowerment, anger, humiliation, alienation and distrust towards security authorities. As Blackwood et al. demonstrate, ‘Muslim airport stories’ are often spread, shared and socially represented within Muslim communities. Such stories present negative encounters with airport security staff and perceptions that Muslims occupy a position of relative powerlessness, where (a) Muslim identities are misrepresented and misunderstood; (b) for those people who uphold them, Scottish or British national identities are partially denied, since Muslims are treated as social aliens; and (c) ‘respectable identities’, which are based on high social status within the Muslim community, are not recognised by wider society. The authors further suggest that this threefold identity denial impacts on both Muslims’ actions and perceptions of their position in society. This process of identity misrecognition, which is the absence of others’ recognition of a person’s understanding of who he or she is (Taylor 1994) and which is promoted by the hyper-visibility of Muslim identities (Hopkins and Blackwood 2011), can hamper the way in which people are able to play out their own ways of being British, Scottish or Muslim during social interactions with airport security staff. The most significant negative consequence of misrecognition is the mirroring back of ‘a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture’ (Taylor 1994, p. 25) to those whose identity is denied. As Blackwood (2015, p. 257) postulates, ‘this is particularly . . . [consequential] for minority group members (or those in low power positions) who are especially attuned to and affected by what they think other groups think about them’. Chanda, a Bangladeshi woman, offers one of the most powerful accounts of being subject to the securitisation of visible Muslimness and describes her emotional state in walking through airports as follows: I feel as if I wanted to vanish. If I am at Edinburgh Airport, I feel so bad. Why me? I feel hundreds of thousands of pairs of eyes looking at me. This is very damaging sometimes. It is very scary, very upsetting. I feel very empty, very isolated, I feel like crying. It is such a bad feeling. (Chanda, Bangladeshi woman in her mid-forties) Chanda’s feelings are not unique among Scottish Muslims and add up to a perception that airports are detrimental social spaces for understanding one’s positioning within society. This perception illustrates the emotional barriers that can hamper the negotiation of identities and rights on an equal basis with security officers. Significantly, it explains why some Muslims in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee decide to utilise stratagems to minimise encounters with 169

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airport authorities, including avoiding others’ gaze and changing one’s posture (Blackwood et al. 2015). Hamid, a middle-aged Pakistani man, claims that police officers allegedly abused their position of power to try to extract information that he did not possess during an airport interview. A British passport-holder, Hamid, further claims to have been harassed and threatened with deportation to Pakistan. He paints a very bleak picture of airports: Stop and search is a big issue at airports. It is really a big issue at airports. I would use the word ‘harassment’ because on a plane that has 200 people only those who have a beard or are Asians get stopped. I am using these words here deliberately: I use the word ‘harassment’ and I also use the word ‘victimisation’ because certain people are targeted. (Hamid, Pakistani man in his mid-fifties) Institutional mistrust as a consequence of both the post-9/11 political and military tensions with Muslim countries, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, and the domestic policing of Muslim people runs high in Scotland. It particularly affects male members of the Muslim community who have had more frequent contact with the police and security authorities. There is a danger that post9/11 security practices could depict law enforcement agencies as being dismissive of Muslims’ belonging to the country. Overt abuse of power can only reinforce Muslims’ perceptions that the security system is hostile. The frustration, anger and humiliation of travelling to or from Scottish airports have prompted some to look for different travelling arrangements: I know of people that got fed up with travelling by air as a result of that. I think that initially it was far from random. (Ali, British Pakistani man in his mid-forties) I have had so many bad experiences – and friends of mine too – at airports here in Scotland, both in Edinburgh and in Glasgow, that I do not even want to fly in to Scottish airports anymore. I am serious. I will go to Manchester. I will go to wherever. (Arif, Canadian Bangladeshi man in his early thirties) The fact that a number of Muslim people ‘got fed up with travelling by air’ is confirmed by Blackwood’s (2015) research that found that avoiding particular airports, travelling less frequently and playing down Muslim identities are common strategies used to avoid unwelcome attention. This situation reached its highest point with the boycott of Glasgow International Airport in 2011 (Campsie and Leask 2011). Certainly, tensions between Muslims and the police have not exploded in episodes of violence as in England (Malik 2011). But it is remarkable that some Muslims decided to boycott a key Scottish airport as a result of what they perceive to be widespread discrimination and hostility.

Conclusion In an age of hostility and distrust towards Islam, discrimination against visible Muslims on the street, in the workplace and at loci of security is not surprising. The emergence of scapegoats, onto which society can pour its fears and insecurities, is not a novel event. Jews in Nazi Germany, communists in the United States after World War II and gays in the 1980s played a role that, at least symbolically, resonates with the discrimination faced by numerous peaceful and law-abiding Muslims in the past fifteen years. A new way to ‘unite a faltering civic society by invoking a common threat . . . and deflect attention away from the genuine causes of insecurity’ 170

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(Vaughan 2002, p. 205), exaggerated cultural worries about Muslims represent a historical continuum. Visibly displaying a Muslim identity affects social interactions with some Scots. An a priori negative categorisation of Muslims has restricted them to an ethno-religious diversity that is considered lesser by wider society. Power-imbalanced relations with airport security officers, who represent the symbolic post-9/11 worries about visible Muslimness, have affected the social confidence and sense of belonging of some community members. As Blackwood’s (2015) research unequivocally demonstrates, people’s perceptions that authorities treat them disrespectfully leads to a loss of trust and confidence, as well as passive non-compliance and active defiance. But while it is true that Muslims have suffered prejudice, hostility and discrimination, the case put forward by Hopkins (2004a, p. 91) that racism ‘is an everyday experience for many of Scotland’s black and minority ethnic population’ needs to be reconsidered. Trends of decreases in recorded racism, which nonetheless still does exist and impacts predominantly on Muslims, and the specific locales where discrimination happens must both be carefully considered. It is also important to contextualise racism within those porous Scottish sociocultural boundaries that have the potential to shape a fully integrative Scottishness and to appreciate that Muslim hypervisibility is not only a trigger for ethno-religious discrimination but also a catalyst for attracting the curiosity of non-Muslims towards Islam. Such forces have also allowed Muslims and non-Muslims to come together and challenge both global stereotyping and local discrimination through acts of resilience, engagement and mutual interest.

Notes 1 The chapter uses various types of data, including qualitative data collected during a doctoral research project on Muslims in Scotland at the University of Edinburgh (2010–2014). Such data comprise 39 interviews with a balanced pool of Muslims and protracted participant observation in Edinburgh in town. 2 Religion is not recorded in these statistics, thus making it difficult to quantify the exact extent of discrimination against Muslims.

Acknowledgements The author and publisher would like to thank the following publishers for permission to reproduce material for which they hold copyright: Edinburgh University Press for the verbatim re-use of parts of chapter 5 of the book Muslims in Scotland: The Making of Community in a Post-9/11 World, which was published in 2016; and Taylor and Francis Group for the verbatim re-use of parts of the article ‘Visible Muslimness in Scotland: Between Discrimination and Integration’, which was published in 2015 in Patterns of Prejudice, 49(4), 367–391.

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14 Islamophobia and the Muslim student Disciplining the intellect Tania Saeed

Introduction Islamophobia is a socio-psychological phenomenon, a form of discrimination and racialization (Meer and Modood 2010; Sayyid 2010) that not only demonizes, dehumanizes and securitizes (Croft 2012) entire Muslim communities, but is also internalized by Muslims, conscious of how their identity is (re)presented in the social and political imagination. It is not simply an “irrational fear” as a phobia, but rather is rationalized through political and media discourse where the Muslim subject is in a perpetual state of “vulnerability” to what is problematically termed “Islamist” extremism, “at risk” of being radicalized, ergo a potential threat. Muslim men in this context pose a direct physical threat whereas Muslim women fluctuate between the “vulnerable fanatic”: vulnerable in their need to be saved from a primitive religious belief system, and a fanatic posing an ideological threat to a progressive British way of life, and a physical threat by being hidden in plain sight behind a veil. In essence the mundane existence of Muslims in Britain has been securitized with Islamophobia increasingly becoming a part of the “British social psyche” (Abbas in press; Saeed 2016). Educational institutions such as schools and universities have also been drawn into the security agenda. The British counter terrorism strategy CONTEST has adopted a four-pronged approach against terrorism that includes “Prevent” which aims at “Preventing Violent Extremism”. Universities and other educational institutions have been implicated as spaces where such radicalization may exist, and therefore can be challenged. Under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (HM Government 2015; hereafter CTSA 2015), a statutory duty has been imposed on educational institutions to report any student who may show signs of vulnerability towards radicalization in the interest of “safeguarding” students. This chapter draws on Muslim student experiences of Islamophobia and the counter terrorism agenda in universities highlighting how the intersection between (in)security and the Muslim identity has resulted in the normalization of Islamophobia. Drawing on a narrative study of forty Muslim female university students and graduates conducted in 2010–2012 when the Muslim student threat dominated media and political rhetoric after the arrest of individuals such as Umar Farouq Abdulmutalib and Roshonora Choudhry, along with recent reports of Islamophobia in educational institutions, this chapter illustrates how Muslim students are engaged in a process of self-censorship and 175

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self-regulation that makes Islamophobia more dangerous, a socio-psychological phenomenon that has become commonplace in the UK, propelled by the existing security agenda.

Locating the Muslim student suspect In contextualizing the experiences of Muslim students today, the historical location of Muslims and Islam within the university needs to be examined. Siddiqui (2007) argues that “[i]nterest in Islam and the Middle East” for instance has been documented since the “reign of Henry II in the twelfth century.” Academic interest was evident in “the establishment of Chairs in Arabic in Cambridge in 1632 and in Oxford four years later” (ibid., p. 561). Edward Said (2003) in his work on Orientalism highlights in detail the nature of such scholarship within the centres of the colonial Empires, informed by a colonial ideal that reinforced the barbarity of non-European civilizations thereby legitimizing the colonial mission. Such scholarship continued to be supported by the British state in its efforts to sustain its colonial rule. For instance, the Reay Report 1909, the Scarbrough Report 1947, the Hayter Report 1961 and the Parker Report 1986 (Siddiqui 2007) systematically outlined the role of higher educational institutions in supporting the colonial Empire and after its collapse the British government’s interests abroad. Albert Hourani (1984) provides an overview of the first three reports highlighting how they reflect the changing nature of British influence abroad. The Reay Report was written during colonial rule: There is little sense, in the Reay Report, of any interchange of cultures; of any idea that by studying Arabic or Chinese and the cultures connected with it one can do more than acquire a useful skill and can enrich oneself. There is even a certain contempt implied in such phrases as those about “the peculiar notions and prejudices of Oriental peoples”. (Hourani 1984, p. 112) When we come to the Scarbrough Report, the age of empire is, in fact, ending . . . what had been questions of colonial rule were becoming questions of international diplomacy, but if that diplomacy were carried on with knowledge, skill and sensitivity, Britain could still have a position of influence . . . Thus the point from which the report starts is that “cooperation between nations is the basis of world-peace and future prosperity”; a nation which does not possess a sound foundation of scholarship is ill-equipped to deal with world-affairs. (Hourani 1984, p. 112) The Scarbrough Report is also cognizant of the changing world order, with Britain falling behind because of its largely “insular policies”. The Hayter Report came out not very long after the Scarbrough Report – fifteen years only – but it was aware that things had changed . . . The colonial empires had dissolved into independent states, and the world was more competitive than before, but the British educational system has not kept pace with this: “so far as it considers any area outside the United Kingdom, it still seems able only to see western Europe, with an occasional bow to North America and the Commonwealth”. (Hourani 1984, p. 112) While these three reports were instrumental in promoting the establishment of Oriental and Area studies, that began with a focus on learning languages to a recognition of the need for a 176

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cross disciplinary approach to further Britain’s interests in a changing global order, the Parker report (1986) highlighted the limitations of the existing programs and the need for a comprehensive national policy that would emphasize linguistic development to support Britain’s diplomatic endeavours: Given (a) that successive governments have seen it as in the country’s interests to maintain a global foreign policy and (b) that British exports are now 30 per cent of GDP as against 20 per cent twenty years ago, it is argued that British chances of success, commercial and diplomatic, in Asia and Africa are significantly increased if our business and diplomatic representatives are able to appreciate and work within their local subtleties. Language and area studies are an all-important means to that end: I believe that the sharper our gift of tongues the sharper our competitive edge . . . (Latham 1986, p. 4) The learning of languages that the Parker report recommended, “the sharper” the “tongue” the greater Britain’s “competitive edge” meant that Oriental and Area Studies programmes continued with their legacy of supporting the British Foreign Office and diplomats abroad. However, this did not imply that academic scholarship beyond interests of diplomacy was absent. One of the criticisms raised by the Parker report, which also quoted the Ministry of Defence, was the impractical nature of scholarship that was being produced by such programs urging universities to focus on more practical approaches to learning languages for the purpose of supporting Britain’s foreign interests (see Latham 1986). To a large extent the teaching and learning about Islam was also located within this Orientalist framework, which continued to be linked with learning Arabic, and promoting the idea of a monolithic Islam. It is also in this context that one can locate the entry of the Commonwealth immigrant. Overseas Muslim students had studied in British universities before, but the social dynamics within Britain changed after the collapse of the British Empire and the entry of immigrants from the Commonwealth in the 1940s and 1950s. For the Muslim population, according to Ahsan (1994, p. 340) their “presence in Britain” could be documented as early as the 1850s with the arrival of sailors that settled in “coastal areas such as Liverpool, Cardiff, Bristol, London and Tyneside” (see also Solomos 2003). However, it was in the 1940s, especially after the British Nationality Act 1948 that provided “the status of British citizens” to subjects from the Commonwealth (albeit with a “comprehensive classification” of this citizenship), that the ethnic and racial composition of the British population gradually started to change (Julios 2008, p. 86). With the UK assuming a “leadership” role in the “British Commonwealth of Nations” after the collapse of the Empire, the influx of Commonwealth immigrants continued, with backlash in the form of race riots from the locals (Spencer 1997, pp. 82, 43–44). The 1960s witnessed policies from the British government that restricted the entrance of immigrants,1 however simultaneously pieces of legislation such as the 1965 Race Relations Act and the Race Relations Act 1968 was also introduced to protect immigrants who were now citizens of Britain (see Layton-Henry 1992; Julios 2008). The entry of Commonwealth immigrants therefore physically changed the characteristics of a predominantly “white” Britain. Such changes in demographics were not immediately reflected in effective access to jobs or educational institutions. Modood (2004) highlights the presence of “structural disadvantages” that minorities faced, including in education (see also Modood and Berthoud 1997). Inequality in relation to class already existed in the UK. This was evident in the continued disparity that was witnessed across educational institutions. The Robbin Report 1963 highlighted this 177

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disparity and “formalized” the idea “that exclusive forms of access to the country’s universities were incompatible with the meritocratic regime of the mid-twentieth century” (see Ross 2005, p. 22). While the composition of the student body in higher education was becoming more diverse (though this was not reflected in the Oxford-Cambridge context), particularly in the post war period, with new universities being established, there continued to be disparity in relation to quality and access. The 1985 Education for All Report (also known as the Swann Report) highlighted the nature of racism and discrimination that contributed to the under-performance of students from “ethnic minority” backgrounds (see Swann 1985, p. 768). In relation to religion, the report outlined the importance of addressing the religious needs of all students. For instance, in the case of Muslims, the report recommended that “the ‘pastoral’ needs of Muslim pupils” be met “to ensure that there is a real respect and understanding by both teachers and parents of each others concerns and that the demands of the school place no child in fundamental conflict with the requirements of his faith” (ibid., pp. 773–774). The report was important in igniting “a high profile academic debate concerning the relative merits of multicultural and antiracist education” (Modood and May 2001, p. 308). There was increasing awareness of institutionalized racism and discrimination across different social institutions yet government policies especially under the Tories seldom addressed such issues adequately. The place of the Muslim identity in Britain’s socio-political discourse became more prominent after the “Rushdie affair” in the 1980s. Salman Rushdie was accused of blasphemy for his book The Satanic Verses, with the Iranian supreme leader Ayottullah Khomeini issuing a religious edict or fatwa calling for his death (Saeed 2016, p. 28). The Muslim communities in Britain had been visibly practising their religion even before the Rushdie affair, but they were often recognized more in relation to their ethnicity rather than their religion (Tyrer 2003), but this particular event was important in “‘politicizing’ the Muslim identity” (see Saeed 2016, pp. 28–29; Addison 2010). It further created the impression that British Muslims were responding to the call of an Iranian religious leader against a fellow British citizen.2 This perception also reinforced a monolithic stereotype of a British Muslim, once again erasing the diversity of religiosity, ethnicity, class, or sect from this category. What was overlooked, as Tyrer (2003) argues, is an increasing frustration from the Muslim community about discrimination and Islamophobia that the British state was refusing to recognize, a frustration that predates the Rushdie protests. Muslims were perceived to be “fundamentalists” and this image informed their experiences in the university. Tyrer (2003) in his work on institutionalized Islamophobia in universities highlights the problematic place of the “fundamentalist Muslim” and the constant negotiations that took place between Muslim and non-Muslim students, Muslim students and the university administration, Islamic student societies (ISocs) and the National Union of Students (NUS) for the right of Muslim students to practise their religious beliefs on university campuses. The fear of Muslim students being targeted by what were considered extremist groups such as Al Muhajiroun and Hizb-ut-Tahrir was a constant source of concern for the government and the university administration. Nabi (2011) in her doctoral work further highlights the impact of the 1998 Extremism and Intolerance on Campus report, and the introduction of “Campus Watch” that continued to locate Muslim students as “fundamentalists” or in danger of being recruited by “Islamist” fundamentalists. The tragedies of 9/11 and 7/7 further securitized the Muslim student identity as a “would be” terrorist. The 7 July 2005 terrorist attack included “home grown” terrorists among whom were individuals who had been educated in universities and colleges in the UK. In 2006, the youngest Muslim, a sixteen-year-old was convicted under the Terrorism Act for possessing “information about bomb making material” and “hidden notes” on “martyrdom” 178

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(Miah 2012). In 2009 Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab was arrested for attempting to blow up a plane headed to the US; on further investigation he was found to be the alumnus of a university in London, and the former president of its ISoc (BBC News 2011). Educated Muslim women were also being flagged for their involvement in extremist and terrorist attacks: the “lyrical terrorist”, Samina Malik was convicted under the Terrorism Act 2000 in 2007 for “possessing records likely to be useful in terrorism” and writing poetry glorifying terrorist acts (Truscott 2007; Saeed 2016, pp. 60–61); Roshonara Choudhry dropped out of university in her third year and was eventually arrested and convicted for stabbing a Member of Parliament to avenge the “people of Iraq” (BBC News 2010; Saeed 2016, p. 61); the emergence of British students fleeing to Syria to join Daesh further reinforced the idea of the dangerous Muslim student. The assumption that these individuals had been radicalized on university campuses was merely that, an assumption without any concrete evidence to confirm such suspicions (see Kundnani 2015; Githens-Mazer 2012). Yet, under “Prevent” educational institutions became one of the sites where potential extremists could be stopped if the “signs” of radicalization could be identified by university personnel. CTSA 2015 made it a legal obligation for individuals showing such “signs” of vulnerability to be reported by universities to the authorities (HM Government 2015). Even before CTSA 2015, university officials were working with the police and security agencies to challenge radicalization or extremism within universities (see Secretary of State for the Home Office 2012, p. 8). CTSA 2015 further emphasized on the importance of upholding “British values” where signs of radicalization could be judged against these “British values”, yet the meaning of these values continues to be debated. CTSA 2015 claimed to also fight against right winged extremism, yet majority of the referrals under Prevent involved Muslim students (Home Office 2018). An NUS survey of 578 Muslim students across universities in the UK highlighted the extent to which Prevent had created an atmosphere of insecurity (NUS 2018). The survey revealed how the Prevent duty had “significantly” affected Muslim student “engagement” with student politics and activism on campus (ibid., p. 7), since they were afraid of being flagged for becoming radicalized. This also had an impact on ISoc membership, with Muslim students avoiding the student society out of fear of being considered “suspect” (NUS 2018; Saeed 2016). Such a policy clearly has repercussions for free speech and political activism in educational institutions. The House of Commons and House of Lords (2018) Joint Committee Report on Freedom of Speech in Universities has also called for an “independent review” of the Prevent strategy and its impact on free speech in universities. Such a policy also creates greater vulnerability towards Islamophobia. Incidents of Muslim students being called terrorists or told to “go back” have increasingly become common occurrences especially in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in the UK, Europe or the US (Wightwick 2018; Milmo 2015). Such incidents are seldom reported as Muslim students often lack confidence in the system to prosecute Islamophobes (NUS 2018). This lack of confidence or trust is reinforced by cases of Muslim students who have been wrongfully suspected of radicalization: A Muslim student was questioned for reading a book on terrorism in his university library, the book was part of his graduate course at Staffordshire University (Ramesh and Halliday 2015); a student in school was questioned for using the term “eco terrorism” during a school debate on environmentalism (Dodd 2015); another student was questioned for campaigning for the Boycott Divest and Sanction movement against Israel in schools (Hooper 2015a). The nature of the questions is also troubling, that often bring up issues of terrorism or terrorist groups such as Daesh and the possibility of students having sympathies towards such groups. The number of “referrals” made under Prevent largely implicate Muslims, with 61 per cent of referrals related 179

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to “Islamist extremism” in 2016/2017; 32 per cent of total referrals coming from the education sector where “the youngest median age” was 14 (Home Office 2018). In such a context, it is therefore not surprising that Muslim students also experience Islamophobia from fellow students and administrators, reinforcing a climate of suspicion about the Muslim student identity. While Muslim men are often more susceptible to such security surveillance, Muslim women who wear the veil or those who are members of ISocs have also shared experiences of Islamophobia and their encounters with the state’s security agenda on campuses. The following section examines such narratives of suspicion with a focus on Muslim women through a biographical study that was conducted in 2010 to 2012 with forty British Muslim women with a Pakistani heritage and overseas Pakistani Muslim women who were studying or upon graduation working in the UK. Members of the student welfare societies and a representative of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) were also interviewed. The participants were between the ages of 19 and 28, who were contacted through ISocs and Pakistani student societies (PakSocs). The author followed the ethics protocol of her university, ensuring that the participants had time to ask questions before participating in the research, and had the option of opting out of the research. Pseudonyms have been used in this paper to protect the identity of the participants in order to ensure anonymity.

Disciplining the Muslim: narratives of control and surveillance It is really unfortunate that because of the actions of a few people every time I am in public now I can’t say certain words just like ooo I am going to explode I am angry, or stuff like that. I have to curb my vocabulary to such an extent as if I am being watched all the time. Even though I would never ever do things like that. . . but because we don’t want to be picked up by people as potential might be doing stuff, you have to change the way you speak. (Sabahat, West Yorkshire, School Teacher) What is considered legitimate “vocabulary” for Muslim students has changed within the security discourse that informs their day to day existence. It is in such a context that certain Muslim identities (read: moderate) are considered more tolerable than others (read: fundamentalist), where Muslims such as Sabahat are conscious of these degrees of “difference” (Tyrer 2003), thereby monitoring their own interactions, afraid of being misinterpreted or misunderstood. Such self-regulation is a deliberate and conscious act by Sabahat – changing the way she speaks is a conscious acceptance of a state of being in a context where Islamophobia is the norm. O’Donnell observes how “the concept of ‘psychic alienation’, derived originally from Fanon . . . best captures the kinds of debilitating paralysis and self-doubt that stops one from speaking for fear of how one will be heard or constituted” (O’Donnell 2016, p. 14). Such perceptions cannot be dismissed as exaggerations either when Muslim students are being reported for reading books or using certain expressions that most certainly will not be flagged had the individuals in question been non-Muslim white students. Islamophobia in its sociopsychological state reinforces this racial dichotomy. The disciplining of the Muslim body and mind therefore becomes a deliberate act by the Muslim self, making Islamophobia more dangerous as a part of the status quo. Another expression of this self-disciplining is evident in Abbas’s (in press) work on Muslim parents and the ways in which the family unit has been securitized under Britain’s counter terrorism agenda. Parents have been encouraged to monitor children at home, who might show “signs” of vulnerability to radicalization (also see Awan and Guru 2016). As Abbas observes, “[i]nternal suspect bodies are 180

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produced within Muslim households where Muslim parents internalise external Islamic markers such as the hijab, jilbab, and Islamic beard as signifiers of extremism, precipitating internal disciplinary measures” (Abbas in press, p. 3). In this study, participants also shared similar narratives of parents discouraging them from becoming “too religious.” A head sister of an ISoc in West Yorkshire university shared her own experience of how her parents became worried when she started taking on the hijab and jilbab, and how ISoc members complained of similar experiences at home when they started praying “tahajud”3 (see Saeed and Johnson 2016, p. 43). It is important to note that the students being monitored by parents in this study are university students (i.e. they are young adults). The attitude of security agencies is one of paternalistic control under the guise of student welfare, where the possibility of a “potential” terrorist act removes any benefit of doubt to be given to the individual in question. Coppock and McGovern highlight the “deeply problematic” framing of young Muslims as vulnerable, arguing that “[d]evoid of meaningful social and political agency, divorced from the structural circumstances of their lived experiences, and problematised in terms of their mental well-being, young British Muslims are thus rendered as appropriate objects for state intervention and surveillance” (Coppock and McGovern 2014, p. 242). The perception of vulnerability to radicalization is also increasingly being associated with ISocs. University ISocs have traditionally played an important role in providing Muslim students a “safe space” to express their religious identity (see Tyrer 2003). According to the NUS Muslim student survey of 2018, for over half of the survey population ISocs still provided a “safe space” on campus, but ironically the responses of ISoc Presidents reveal the increasing pressure from the Prevent duty that has contributed to a “decline in membership due to concerns of surveillance by authorities” (NUS 2018, p. 178). Students in this study also highlighted the problems that ISocs in particular faced as a result of the Prevent duty (see Saeed and Johnson 2016). Muslim parents had started discouraging their children from joining ISocs, especially in the aftermath of the Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab case. Hafsa, who belonged to a university in the northeast of England, was convinced that her ISoc was infiltrated by a spy who was informing the university administration about their activities. Nadiya’s ISoc in West Yorkshire continued to face resistance from “middle management” whom she believed deliberately created hurdles for the ISoc such as mismanaging event bookings since they were suspicious of ISoc activities. Inviting speakers without opposition from the university was a constant battle across ISocs in different universities, a problem that all students believed that other student societies did not confront. A reason for this increased vigilance of ISoc speaker events was the belief that students were being radicalized because of these speakers, which is why they needed to be monitored. However, far from challenging the ideology or arguments of the proposed speaker, students were simply not permitted to invite any such speaker, and often ISoc members would have no choice but to concede to the administration. The complaint of ISoc members was about the manner in which such speaker events were cancelled. They complained about instances of universities refusing speakers at the last minute when all the arrangements had been made. Often the complaint was more about the way they were told off, where there was no room for debate. Such a response from universities in upholding the Prevent duty did not challenge the potential of radicalization in any way, but simply prevented the possibility of any form of intellectual debate. In practice, the Prevent duty in universities was stifling critical engagement by adopting such a paternalistic attitude towards ISocs, instead of taking the opportunity to create space for discussion. This was extremely problematic especially when ISocs were willing to engage with the university administration in order to understand why certain speakers were considered controversial and not given a platform. 181

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Faculty at times were also implicated in biased or Islamophobic attitude towards students. As O’Donnell notes: So many indicators can serve as potential symptoms or markers of risk, especially if one is a Muslim, that speaking freely becomes ever more difficult. Not only the student but also the teacher or lecturer must engage in constant self-scrutiny, since the implications of error are so serious in a “risk society”. (O’Donnell 2016, p. 13) Placing the onus of detecting signs of vulnerability to radicalization on teachers is a tremendous burden. Busher et al.’s (2017) study of “educationalists experiences” of the “Prevent duty” highlighted mixed responses when the educators in question were less experienced with the Prevent duty. With media reports highlighting incidents of students being wrongfully reported, Muslim students are less at ease with such a Prevent duty (see NUS 2018; Saeed and Johnson 2016). While such instances often came up in relation to members of ISocs, Muslim students in class also noticed a difference in behaviour. One referred to a teacher “who is really really discriminatory”: I could tell something was off about the teacher in terms of Muslims . . . And she wouldn’t ask me questions, all other teachers would but she would divert her glance and she would be surprised if I would give sort of answer which was pro the law, and as opposed to pro what the Muslims should be thinking or doing. If I would give an answer which was pro what she was saying she would be all shocked that oh a Muslim is saying that. There was this prejudice in her head from the beginning. (Hafsa, northeast, law student) Hafsa was not alone in experiencing such responses from teachers. Nadiya also felt that some of her professors often looked to her when discussing topics involving Muslims or Islam, and she often took that as a challenge, and an opportunity for debate. Such incidents were more apparent with students who wore the niqab. Faiza, a student from a West Yorkshire university, faced issues with invigilators during her final exams, where in one case she was asked by a male invigilator to remove her niqab “in front of” 200 students to check for ID, while in another case she felt patronized by an invigilator who thought she could not understand English which she found especially condescending since she was taking an English exam (Saeed 2016). In all of these cases, the students did not report any of the incidents. Faiza in particular was encouraged by class fellows to report the invigilator who made her remove the niqab but she chose to ignore it, believing that this was part of “living” as a “minority.” As the FOSIS representative noted: Islamophobia has different levels and we do acknowledge that. Large part of it is ignorance, not understanding the real principles of Islam . . . The most dangerous type is institutional, where organization or the government get away with saying things or treating particular groups of people in a way without realizing how highly offensive it is. One of our biggest challenges is of course fighting that as it has become deeply entrenched over the years. (FOSIS representative, 2011) The welfare officer in the context of Faiza’s university was unaware of any such Islamophobic incidents. While the lack of reporting could be considered one of the problems associated with Islamophobia being normalized in universities, universities will need to be more proactive in 182

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making sure that such incidents are reported. For students such incidents may also be the result of ignorance or misunderstanding by people, rather than malice or hatred, which is why they are not reported, but also as the FOSIS representative highlights, there is a trust deficit: The problem with such incident is that as a community we do feel that people might accuse us of crying wolf, being the victim so people they don’t have public support so they are not vocal about it. (FOSIS representative, 2011) The fear of crying wolf is reinforced by the larger media and political discourse about Muslims. This lack of reporting reflects a lack of belief in the system to address the grievances of Muslim students. This is not to suggest that students did not ever report such incidents. There were examples of students expressing confidence in their university’s ability to address Islamophobia, yet the same students were often unsure about the process of reporting such incidents. Others were put off by the bureaucratic system that made it impossible to see through a complaint. Without having the confidence in the system, or a smooth mechanism through which a complaint can be processed, there is an undercurrent of tolerance or indifference towards such Islamophobic behaviour, which has continued to persist with Islamophobia becoming normalized. Such normalization of an Islamophobic discourse about the Muslim student identity was also evident in the way in which Muslim students controlled their intellectual interests. Even before the case of the Staffordshire University student who was reported for reading a book on terrorism, students in this study avoided certain topics for research, afraid that their work might be flagged. This was especially a concern after the case of a Masters students who was reported to the authorities for downloading the Al Qaeda manual for research that was available in book stores. The student was held in police custody despite his supervisor’s intervention proving that the manual was for research (Thornton 2011). This incident became a source of concern as the FOSIS representative noted: Particularly when I am speaking with Muslim students who are doubting whether they should research a particular area because they think somebody is going to knock on their door and cause them grief. The hugest concern here is that Muslim students can’t practice their religion or just live as normal citizens without that fear in the same way other students might be able to. (FOSIS representative, 2011)4 This culture of surveillance has most certainly increased under Prevent, with educational institutions asked to monitor online activities of students. In schools, special software has been installed that flags the use of certain keywords (Hooper 2015b); in universities email correspondence is under surveillance with universities such as Kings College London clearly informing its users about monitoring their emails (Weale 2017). In a post Brexit context, university faculty has also been instructed to report any students who may be in violation of their study visas, with the threat of a twenty thousand pound fine placed on faculty members individually for failing to comply (Batty 2018). Faculty in such an instance becomes an appendage to the states’ security apparatus, which inevitably compromises the relationship of trust between students and their faculty. The Prevent approach by monitoring student activity has undermined the potential of educational institutions to be spaces where problematic beliefs can be challenged through intellectual debates; it further undermines the potential of progressive pedagogies (see Giroux 2005; 183

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hooks 1994) to be employed in the classroom that are increasingly serving market forces rather than educating students as critical citizens. Self-censorship is inevitable in a context where any expression deemed “radical” might result in students being reported to security services. This is further illustrated in the tension between the self-proclaimed moderate Muslim students against the overtly religiously and the problematically termed “fundamentalists”, especially members of the ISocs. The participants in this study belonged to different degrees of religiosity, with narratives from young women who confessed to avoiding the overtly religious Muslim students since they did not want to be misunderstood or accused of being radical. They were also honest in their account of their own biases that were challenged when they met ISoc members and were “pleasantly surprised” at the fact that they were “normal”. ISoc members often encountered such students, as Natasha observes: But then some people who are afraid, who feel scared, they want to adopt an appearance, and want to participate in activities and want to behave in a manner which shows that they are not practising Muslims, because they feel that they will be more acceptable to their friends and class fellows and they feel more secure that nobody is going to say or do anything against them . . . there are some people who adopt all these ways just to become more acceptable for the rest of the people maybe their friends or the students whom they are with. (Natasha, West Yorkshire, social sciences) Natasha’s narrative highlights how this fear of being misunderstood can take on different forms. In her example the students are deliberately behaving in a certain way in order to “be more acceptable” for the non-Muslim Self that determines the level of acceptability. However, Muslim students also argued that such binaries reinforced the idea that a Muslim who “appeared” moderate was not as religious as someone who was more physically expressive of their religiosity, an idea that undermined their religiosity as British Muslims. As Aisha observes, “you don’t want to be either really,” since in both instances it is the Muslimness of the student that is being judged externally (see Brown and Saeed 2015).

Concluding discussion: Islamophobia and surveillance Surveillance of students is increasingly becoming the norm in the twenty first century British university (see Swain 2018; Batty 2018). Muslim students in the age of surveillance are particularly at risk of being targeted under CTSA 2015 reinforcing an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Faculty and university administrators are being forced to become agents of the state’s security agenda within an educational institution that should be free to question and challenge all forms of ideologies yet is legally required to report any student who might be perceived to be “radical” though the “signs” of this radicalization continue to be questioned. The reporting of the student undermines the possibility of any debate or engagement, where Muslim students in particular are increasingly conscious of their speech and behaviour being placed under greater scrutiny. Such awareness has resulted in acts of self-censorship, as the preceding discussion highlights. When individuals participate in a discourse of insecurity about their identities, such participation is considered a necessity for survival and to an extent a necessity for acceptance. Such participation is a response to an Islamophobic discourse that further undermines the basic tenets of a democracy where “minority” communities are constantly under pressure to appear “normal” and not be misunderstood. It is in this act of self-censorship out of necessity that Islamophobia takes on a socio-psychological dimension. 184

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The chapter also locates the Muslim student identity within a broader socio-political discourse of Muslims and Islam in Britain that continued to be placed within an Orientalist framework, with Islam and the Muslim identity historically found outside the physical and ideological border of Britain and Britishness (Croft 2012; Sayyid 2010). The suspect status of the Muslim today is informed by this historical reality of Orientalism. The place of Islam and the Muslim student within the British university was also historically located beyond the colonial centre, which for the state was only to be studied for the express purpose of furthering Britain’s Imperialist and post-colonial diplomatic agenda. The entrance of the Commonwealth immigrant into the UK, and the eventual place of Commonwealth and Muslim students within educational institutions is marred by structural racism and the fight to realize Britain’s multicultural identity. However, in the era of a Conservative “muscular liberalism” the place of Muslims in the UK and in the British university continues to be fraught with tensions where monitoring and surveillance of students (predominantly Muslim) is promoted as a legal necessity in the fight against terrorism, normalizing an Islamophobic discourse about Muslim student identity in the modern university.

Notes 1 See the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962. 2 Ironically as Modood (1990) highlights Muslims who took part in the protests were predominantly of a Sunni Pakistani heritage, rather than Shi’ite Iranian. 3 ‘Prayer said late at night’ (Saeed and Johnson 2016, p. 49). 4 See also Saeed and Johnson (2016, p. 44).

References Abbas, M. In press. “I grew a beard and my dad flipped out!” Cooption of British Muslim parents in countering “extremism” within their families in Bradford and Leeds. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1–19. doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2018.1466694. Addison, P. 2010. No Turning Back: The Peacetime Revolutions of Post-War Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ahsan, M. M. 1994. Islam and Muslims in Britain. In A. Mutalib and T. Hashmi (eds), Islam, Muslims and the Modern State, pp. 339–361. London: Macmillan Press. Awan, I. and Guru, S. 2017. Parents of foreign “terrorist” fighters in Syria – will they report their young? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(1), 24–42. Batty, D. 2018. UCL row over email stating immigration-check fine of £20,000. The Guardian, 12 July. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/12/ucl-row-email-immigration-checkfine-draconian-discriminatory (accessed 15 July 2018). BBC News. 2010. Woman jailed for life for attack on MP Stephen Timms. BBC News, 3 November. Retrieved from www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11682732 (accessed 1 June 2018). BBC News. 2011. Profile: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. BBC News, 12 October. Retrieved from www. bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11545509 (accessed 1 June 2018). Brown, K. E. and Saeed, T. 2015. Radicalization and counter-radicalization at British universities: Muslim encounters and alternatives. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(11), 1952–1968. Busher, J., Choudhury, T., Thomas, P. and Harris, G. 2017. What the Prevent Duty Means for Schools and Colleges in England: An Analysis of Educationalists’ Experiences. London: Aziz Foundation. Coppock, V. and McGovern, M. 2014. “Dangerous Minds”? Deconstructing Counter-Terrorism Discourse, Radicalisation and the “Psychological Vulnerability” of Muslim Children and Young People in Britain. Children and Society, 28(3), 242–256. Croft, S. 2012. Securitizing Islam Identity and the Search for Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dodd, V. 2015. School questioned Muslim pupil about Isis after discussion on ecoactivism. The Guardian, 22 September. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/education/2015/sep/22/school-questionedmuslim-pupil-about-isis-after-discussion-on-eco-activism (accessed 1 June 2018). Giroux, H. A. 2005. Border Crossing: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education. New York: Routledge. 185

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Githens-Mazer, J. 2012. The rhetoric and reality: Radicalization and political discourse. International Political Science Review, 33(5), 556–567. HM Government. 2015. Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015. Retrieved from www.legislation.gov. uk/ukpga/2015/6/notes/contents (accessed 20 May 2018). Home Office 2018. Individuals Referred to and Supported Through the Prevent Programme, April 2016 to March 2017. Statistical Bulletin 06/18. London: Crown. hooks, b. 1994. Teaching to Transgress Education as the Practice of Freedom. London: Routledge. Hooper, S. 2015a. Stifling freedom of expression in UK schools. Al Jazeera, 23 July. Retrieved from www. aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/07/stifling-freedom-expression-uk-schools-150721080612049. html (accessed 1 June 2018). Hooper, S. 2015b. UK: Keyword warning software in schools raises red flag. Al Jazeera, 4 October. Retrieved from www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/10/uk-keyword-warning-softwareschoolsraises-red-flag-151004081940435.html;%20www.theguardian.com/uknews/2015/jun/10/schoolstrial-anti-radicalisation-software-pupils-internet (accessed 1 June 2018). Hourani, A. 1984. Middle Eastern studies today. Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies), 11(2), 111–120. House of Commons and House of Lords. 2018. Fourth Report of Session 2017–19. London: Joint Committee on Human Rights Freedom of Speech in Universities. Julios, C. 2008. Contemporary British Identity: English Language, Migrants, and Public Discourse. Aldershot: Ashgate. Kundnani, A. 2015. A Decade Lost: Rethinking Radicalisation and Extremism. London: Claystone. Latham, J. D. 1986. The Parker Report. Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies), 13(1), 3–14. Layton-Henry, Z. 1992. The Politics of Immigration: Immigration, “Race” and “Race” Relations in Post-War Britain. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Meer, N. and Modood, T. 2010. The racialisation of Muslims. In S. Sayyid and A. Vakil (eds), Thinking through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives, pp. 69–84. London: Hurst and Co. Miah, S. 2012. School desegregation and the politics of “forced integration”. Race & Class, 54(2), 26–38. Milmo, C. 2015. British Muslim school children suffering a backlash of abuse following Paris attacks. The Independent, 23 January. Retrieved from www.independent.co.uk/news/education/educationnews/ british-muslim-school-children-suffering-a-backlash-of-abuse-following-paris-attacks-9999393.html (accessed 1 June 2018). Modood, T. 1990. British Asian and Muslims and the Rushdie affair. The Political Quarterly, 61(2), 143–160. Modood, T. 2004. Capitals, ethnic identity and educational qualifications. Cultural Trends, 13(2), 87–105. Modood, T. and Berthoud, R. 1997. Ethnic Minorities in Britain: Diversity and Disadvantage. The Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities. London: Policy Studies Institute. Modood, T. and May, S. 2001. Multiculturalism and education in Britain: an internally contested debate. International Journal of Educational Research, 35(3), 305–317. Nabi, S. 2011. How is Islamophobia institutionalised? Racialised governmentality and the case of Muslim students in British universities. PhD thesis, University of Manchester. NUS. 2018. The Experience of Muslim Students in 2017–18. London: NUS. O’Donnell, A. 2016. Securitisation, counterterrorism and the silencing of dissent: the educational implications of Prevent. British Journal of Educational Studies, 64(1), 53–76. Ramesh, R. and Halliday, J. 2015. Student accused of being a terrorist for reading book on terrorism. The Guardian, 24 September. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/education/2015/sep/24/studentaccused-being-terroristreading-book-terrorism (accessed 1 June 2018). Ross, A. 2003. Higher education and social access to the Robbins Report. In L. Archer, M. Hutchings and A. Ross (eds), Higher Education and Social Class Issues of Exclusion and Inclusion, pp. 21–44. Abingdon: RoutldgeFalmer. Saeed, T. 2016. Islamophobia and Securitization. Religion, Ethnicity and the Female Voice. Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Saeed T. and Johnson D. 2016. Intelligence, global terrorism and higher education: neutralising threats or alienating allies? British Journal of Educational Studies, 64(1), 37–58. Said, E. 2003. Orientalism. London: Penguin Books. Sayyid, S. 2010. Out of the devil’s dictionary. In S. Sayyid and A. Vakil (eds), Thinking through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives, pp. 5–18. London: Hurst and Co.

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Secretary of State for the Home Department. 2012. The Government Response to the Nineteenth Report from the Home Affairs Committee Session 2010–12 HC 1446 Roots of violent radicalisation. London: The Stationery Office. Siddiqui, A. 2007. Islam at universities in England: meeting the needs and investing in the future. Islamic Studies, 46(4), 559–570. Solomos, J. 2003. Race and Racism in Britain, 3rd edition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Spencer, I. R. G. 1997. British Immigration Policy since 1939 the Making of Multi-racial Britain. Abingdon: Routledge. Swain, H. 2018. Hostile environment: how risk-averse universities penalise migrants. The Guardian, 5 June. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jun/05/universities-immigration-riskhostile-environments (accessed 11 June 2018). Swann, M. 1985. The Swann Report Education for All. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Thornton, R. 2011. Counterterrorism and the neo-liberal university: providing a check and balance? Critical Studies on Terrorism, 4(3), 421–429. Truscott, C. 2007. “Lyrical terrorist” sentenced over extremist poetry. The Guardian, 6 December. Retrieved from www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/dec/06/terrorism.books (accessed 1 June 2018). Tyrer, D. 2003. Institutionalized Islamophobia in British universities. PhD thesis, University of Salford. Weale, S. 2017. London university tells students their emails may be monitored. The Guardian, 20 January. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/20/university-warns-students-emailsmay-be-monitored-kings-college-london-prevent (accessed 5 June 2018). Wightwick, A. 2018. “I’ve been called a terrorist at school”: the Islamophobic abuse experienced by pupils in Wales. WalesOnline, 15 January. Retrieved from www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/ivebeen-called-terrorist-school-14153712 (accessed 1 June 2018).

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15 Islamophobia in UK universities Hareem Ghani and Ilyas Nagdee

Introduction This chapter has been adapted from the research report The Experiences of Muslim Students in 2017–18 (NUS 2018), which was commissioned by the National Union of Students (NUS) Women’s Campaign, NUS Black Students Campaign and the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) as the first comprehensive piece of work devoted entirely to capturing Muslim students’ and sabbatical officers’ experiences in colleges and universities throughout the UK. It is also based on The Experiences of Muslim Women in Education in 2017–18, a supplementary briefing to the report (NUS Women’s Campaign 2018). As NUS Women’s Officer and NUS Black Students’ Officer, when we were first elected into our roles, it became increasingly apparent that the organisation, and by extension sector as a whole, failed to grasp the day-to-day realities of Muslim students on campus – and by extension, the needs of Muslim communities as a whole. With an estimated 150,000 Muslim students in higher education and thousands more in further education, there seemed to be little information or understanding about the ‘Muslim’ student experience. This research was therefore commissioned as an attempt to bridge this gap, and to resolve questions like ‘What does it mean to be Muslim in Britain today?’ Perhaps it is worth stating that the decision to roll out this survey began as early as October 2016 – a year before it finally launched – amid increasing concerns about the normalisation of Islamophobia in society, as well as the scrutiny and racism levelled at Muslims in public positions – including prominent and emerging student activists. One cannot deny, for example, that there has been a dramatic surge in anti-Muslim sentiment – both within our educational settings and in broader society as a whole. The last few decades are littered with stories of physical violence, the over-policing of minority communities and systematic inequalities. For one, the Muslim community is described as the most economically disadvantaged group in the country – with almost 50 per cent of the Muslim population living in the ten most deprived local authorities. A 2017 report found that young Muslims living in the UK face an enormous social mobility challenge and are being held back from reaching their full potential at every stage of their lives: they are more likely to drop out of their studies, less likely to acquire ‘good degrees’ (a 1st or a 2:1), and more likely to be unemployed (Social Mobility Commission 2017). 188

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The daily realities of Muslim women go further in highlighting such patterns of discrimination. They are experiencing the greatest pay gap in the country, they are 71 per cent more likely to be unemployed than their white Christian counterparts (even with the same level of education and language skills) and they are experiencing the ‘triple penalty’ that comes with being a woman, a person of colour and a Muslim (Women and Equalities Committee 2017). We must not forget that these inequalities are rooted and reflected in every aspect of the British Muslim experience (and felt two-fold by those who have intersecting identities, e.g. Black Muslims). Muslim women in prisons for example, face a unique combination of stigma and discrimination from fellow prisoners, staff and from among their own communities (Muslim Hands 2017). With the fallout from the EU referendum and Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States, Islamophobic attacks have taken on a particular visibility in the public imagination – ranging from attacks on mosques to the physical and verbal harassment experienced by individuals on public transport. One cannot overlook the fact that only a few months prior, ‘Punish a Muslim Day’ flyers were circulated in cities across the country which encouraged people to ‘butcher a Muslim using gun, knife, vehicle’, ‘burn or bomb a mosque’ and ‘pull the head-scarf off a Muslim woman’ (BBC 2018a). Just days later four Labour MPs were sent suspect packages and letters within a 48-hour cycle. Rupa Huq MP revealed that one of her staff members was sent to hospital after handling an ‘irritant substance’ but was later discharged (BBC 2018b). These incidents have been replicated in universities and campuses across the country. In 2014, the prayer room signs at King’s College London were defaced in the wake of a vote in favour of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement (Roar News 2014). Two years later, a fellow student had her niqab (face veil) ripped off just steps away from the university entrance (Independent 2016). In both instances, the response from university administration was uninspiring at best. Alongside this, extensive measures are being introduced by further and higher education institutions to monitor the activities of Muslim students – from installing cameras in prayer rooms to tracking emails. In attempting to implement their Prevent policy to meet their legal responsibilities to prevent terrorism, universities are effectively placing Muslims under strict surveillance. Measures such as these both draw upon and feed Islamophobia, while also undermining education institutions’ ability to function as spaces of cooperation and learning. Perhaps it is worth emphasising that the violence and discrimination Muslim students experience in universities and colleges is connected to the violence they experience elsewhere. Media platforms are unrestrained in their Islamophobia with Muslim activists and student officers regularly facing the force of racist smears and attacks. In the last year alone, countless sabbatical officers as well as the former NUS president Malia Bouattia have been systematically targeted by a hostile press that sees Muslims engaging in politics (and by extension, all people of colour engaging in politics) as inherently suspect. The institutionalised nature of Islamophobia is equally pernicious. NUS’s own Racism: a Light Sleeper report, published in 1999 and touted as its ‘first ever anti-racist handbook’, reiterated damaging conspiracies about the ‘threat of Islamic extremist organisations’ and abusive ‘Muslim extremists’ on campus, rather than the very real threats facing Muslim students (NUS 1999, p. 3). Meanwhile, incremental improvements in Muslim student representation in students’ unions and NUS have been accompanied by venomous pushback and attacks in the media and from peers, which impede Muslim students’ current and potential political involvement. This means that the opportunities for personal growth and civic engagement offered by our movement is increasingly limited for our Muslim peers. There is often a tendency within activist spaces to explain Islamophobia as a recent political phenomenon – one 189

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that emerged with the election of Trump and the resurgence of the alt-right. However, it is worth stating that anti-Muslim attitudes have existed for as long as Islam has existed. We cannot afford to explain Islamophobia without grasping this fundamental truth. The Muslim Students’ Survey aimed to capture these experiences. It addresses a whole spectrum of issues faced by Muslim students in further and higher education – from their everyday interactions in lecture theatres to involvement in their students’ unions and student societies, their feelings of safety on campus and their perceptions of media representations of their fellow Muslims. As NUS elected leaders it is worth mentioning that this research was the product of the deep-seated racism that we personally experienced and witnessed during our time in the student movement. Building on the experiences of former Muslim NUS officers and volunteers, it also sought to understand how NUS can better support Muslim students’ participation in the student movement, enable successful Muslim leadership and challenge Islamophobia in all its forms.

Methodology The Muslim Students’ Survey was launched in 2017 as part of Islamophobia Awareness Month. The research was commissioned to better understand the Muslim further and higher education student population in the UK and their experience of their educational institutions, students’ unions and of NUS. It was developed in consultation with Muslim student representatives from both higher and further education and the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS). The survey comprised questions with defined, multiple choice answers – primarily yielding quantitative information – but respondents also had opportunities to add comments, providing some qualitative data. We received 578 responses to our research survey among UK-based Muslim students. Almost all respondents (93 per cent) were in full-time education and 82 per cent were UK citizens. We also received a small number of responses from sabbatical officers, accounting for 5 per cent of all responses. 67 per cent of respondents identified as women, a further 2 per cent defined as non-binary or preferred not to disclose their gender and the remaining were men. We asked women respondents if they wore any religious coverings, of those who answered this question, 61 per cent wore a hijab, four per cent wore a jilbab, one per cent wore a niqab and 32 per cent wore none of the above. This question allowed us to analyse any statistically significant differences between women who were ‘visibly Muslim’ and those who were not. The research did not seek to compare Muslim students with all other students. Instead, it sought to understand Muslim students’ experiences and their barriers to general involvement in their learning environment and community. While The Experiences of Muslim Students in 2017–18 covers a broad range of issues from participation in student union activities to political engagement and student democracy in this chapter we have chosen to focus on the findings related to Prevent; hate crime, harassment and Islamophobia1 and the gendered perspective on each of these. As these experiences are most widely felt across the Muslim student population they pose the gravest threats to our education and our ability to engage in the student movement.

Prevent and the stifling effect of counter-terrorism The Prevent duty has been a legal requirement for further and higher education institutions and staff since the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015. It is designed to combat exposure to ‘extremism’, which the programme states can lead to individuals being ‘radicalised’ into 190

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committing crime intended to make political change. The Prevent duty requires education institutions to identify and report students who they deem to be vulnerable to ‘radicalisation’ or ‘extremism’.2 This may involve referring students via Channel, one of many local multiagency boards with broad powers, which can recommend that a student must attend a variety of programmes. NUS believes that this approach is fundamentally flawed and discriminatory. The Black Students’ Campaign has for the past three years run the ‘Students Not Suspects’ campaign opposing Prevent stating that it needs to be abolished (NUS 2015).

Awareness and understanding One-third of survey respondents felt negatively affected by the Prevent strategy. This included participating less in political activity or debate; having events they have organised being restricted or cancelled; or being reported through Prevent. Whether a Muslim student has been affected by Prevent is a significant indicator of whether they are involved in a wide variety of student activities and their opinions on a variety of matters. As such we noted throughout the survey where these answers significantly differed from the rest of the respondents, had they been affected by Prevent. Male respondents were more likely to be very or extremely aware of Prevent. Students affected by Prevent highlighted that their experience of Prevent has led to them taking part in less political activity. Muslim students feel strongly about what Prevent entails. An overwhelming majority of respondents disagreed that lecturers and education institutions should monitor and report students’ attitudes and behaviours, prayer room activities and email/online activity. Three in five respondents disagreed that lecturers should report on their views and opinions. Having personal experience of the impact of Prevent heightens these responses. Significantly more women who wore religious coverings disagreed with facets of the duty compared with those who do not. For example women wearing garments are more likely to disagree that lecturers should be reporting to the government on their students’ views and opinions (69 per cent of women who wear a garment versus 53 per cent for those who did not), or that institutions should be monitoring recording student emails and internet/web usage (72 per cent versus 56 per cent respectively). Two out of five respondents (43 per cent) who reported having been affected by Prevent told us that this experience made it harder to express their opinions or views. Nearly a third of students (30 per cent) who have been affected by Prevent reported experiencing barriers to organising speakers and events on campus. In lessons I found myself not speaking my true opinion because of fear of being misreported as a result, just for saying my opinion, and I worry that others will just comment. (Woman, aged 22–23, Masters student) [When I was] getting a certain speaker for an event, Prevent were involved and had to be present for the talk, in addition to police as well, shockingly. (Man, aged 22–23, higher education student) Muslim students most likely not to have been affected by Prevent include those not involved with their students’ union, international students and women who do not wear religious garments (eg hijab or niqab). Muslim women who wear a covering are significantly more likely to be affected by Prevent during their time in education than those who do not; 40 per cent compared with 26 per cent. This kind of correlation may raise further questions regarding how 191

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the Prevent duty functions to highlight specific Muslim students relating to their demographics, rather than their behaviour, and in turn amplifies existing biases and stereotypes of Muslims.

The impact of Prevent on participation in civic life Our research findings suggest that Muslim students follow a similar pattern to other students in terms of their general levels of participation (both passive and active) in student union activities, including a small percentage who have no involvement whatsoever. Respondents who reported a complete lack of involvement in these activities are more likely to have reported being unaffected by Prevent. Conversely, students who reported an acute awareness of their students’ union’s work are more likely to have reported being affected by Prevent. Muslim students affected by Prevent are more likely to disagree that their students’ union understands their needs or reflects their views. These findings are reflected in Muslim students’ engagement in, and attitudes towards, NUS. Respondents who are not involved with their students’ union and/or not affected by Prevent were more likely to report being unaware of NUS’ work. Respondents’ awareness of Prevent tends to accompany a lack of comfort attending NUS events (with 30 per cent of those affected by Prevent not feeling comfortable by contrast to 17 per cent of those not affected). This group also disagreed that NUS understands the needs of Muslim students (comprising 35 per cent in comparison with 20 per cent of those unaffected). Students affected by Prevent are also more likely to have attended NUS events. Negative feedback on NUS events focuses on access and the politicised nature of Muslim identity at policy and democratic events rather than the organisation’s position on key political issues such as Prevent however. While participation in these kinds of events was low (eight out of ten respondents had not attended any kind of NUS event) it is of note that 38 per cent of respondents’ comments relating to experiences of attending NUS democratic or policy events expressed a feeling that these were not supportive of Muslims or that attendees had experienced anti-Muslim comments. One in three of these respondents said they were made to feel unwelcome in such NUS spaces.

Feelings of safety and political disengagement Muslim students reported being generally relatively happy to be involved in discussions on racism, Islamophobia and provisions for Muslim students. They were more likely to report being uncomfortable or unsure about debating terrorism (43 per cent of respondents would not feel comfortable), Palestine and the Prevent duty, although half of the respondents would still feel comfortable engaging in debates on these issues. Forty four per cent do not feel comfortable about the way issues relating to Muslim people or terrorism are covered in class. Reasons cited included general feelings of discomfort, how others view them, and concerns about being misunderstood or not knowing enough about the topics. One in ten students who would not get involved specifically cited fear of being reported to Prevent. Being under the radar. Potentially reported to Prevent. Being misunderstood. (Man, aged 20–21, higher education student) It is also important to note that women wearing a religious garment are less likely to feel comfortable both with the way these issues are discussed and also engaging such debates than those who do not wear one. 192

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Only a quarter of Muslim students felt that there is a safe space or forum on campus where they can discuss issues that affect them. Over half of this group highlighted their Islamic society (ISoc) as that space, indicating the importance of those societies. It is concerning that it is primarily Muslim-only spaces that are considered safe spaces for these students, which may highlight a need for more cultural competency in other forums and services. Students affected by Prevent are significantly more likely to believe there is no safe space or forum on campus to discuss issues that affect them. It is notable that Prevent causes discomfort for students engaging in politicised aspects of student life. For example, students affected by Prevent reported being less likely to feel comfortable running for voluntary or sabbatical roles within the student movement, as opposed to academic roles such as course representatives. Qualitative feedback from respondents who reported being less willing to run for any roles explicitly highlight their Muslim identity as a factor, but it is awareness of Prevent that correlates with a lack of comfort running for political roles. I feel confident that there would be no discrimination or any judgement when it comes to being a course rep. I’m somewhat confident my class would be supportive. (Woman, aged 22–23, Masters student) There is a high level of consensus among respondents that media portrayals of Muslims and Islam are not positive (91 per cent agreed with this) and that attacks against Muslims are not reported in the media to the same extent as those on other groups (90 per cent). However, the impact of these portrayals on students is influenced primarily by two things; their experience of Prevent and their being visibly Muslim. Students who have been affected by Prevent and women who wear religious coverings are more likely to cite media representation of Muslims as a reason not to seek a high-profile position within their students’ union than those who do not belong in either group. These respondents are also more likely to believe that media coverage of terrorism influences how other people treat them. Sixty-nine per cent of women wearing a religious covering for example disagreed that the reporting of recent terrorist attacks in the national media has no effect on how other people treat them compared with 52 per cent of women who do not. This highlights that the very real consequences of anti-Muslim sentiment in the media disproportionately affects those who are visibly Muslim.

Experiences of hate crime, Islamophobia and representations of Muslims We asked respondents about their attitudes towards, and experiences of, hate crime and harassment, including online. We were interested in a variety of experiences, including verbal abuse, physical attacks, vandalism, property damage and theft. When these actions are motivated by religion or belief, they are hate crimes.

Experiences of hate crime and harassment One in three respondents were fairly or very worried about experiencing verbal abuse, physical attacks, vandalism, property damage or theft relating to their religion or belief at their place of study. One in three respondents said they had experienced some type of abuse or crime at their place of study, with one in five experiencing verbal abuse in person. Findings indicate women were consistently more worried than men about being attacked, particularly being targeted as a result of their faith, but this is much more pronounced for women who wear religious garments; while 10 per cent of all respondents reported being very 193

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worried about being subject to a hate incident or abuse, this increased to 15 per cent for women who wore a garment. When looking specifically at the differences between women who wear a covering with those who do not, 10 per cent of the former were very worried compared to 2 per cent of the latter. The vast majority (79 per cent) of respondents who have experienced abuse or crime believed that this was motivated by prejudice relating to their Muslim identity, with seven out of ten of these respondents citing prejudiced statements or gestures made by perpetrator/s before, during or after the incident as their reason for doing so. Hate words or symbols, and the event coinciding with a recent terror attack, were also noted by respondents as reasons for believing the perpetrator’s actions were motivated by religious prejudice. Of those who believed an incident related to prejudice, 28 per cent stated it occurred while they were engaged in activism that challenged Islamophobia. The experiences of LGBT+ Muslim students were particularly concerning. While the number of responses from this group was fairly low, out of the 29 received 15 had experienced an incident at their place of study and 11 were fairly or very worried about being targeted. This suggests that students with intersecting identities may be attacked both as result of defining as, in this case, Muslim and also LGBT+. This is supported by existing studies (Meyer 2010). Survey respondents’ views on reporting Islamophobic incidents were mixed. More than one-third (36 per cent) said they would report an Islamophobic incident to a member of academic staff and 29 per cent would report to the police. Similarly, 29 per cent of respondents said they would report such incidents to their ISoc, and 21 per cent would report to a hate crime reporting centre. Less commonly selected reporting options included sabbatical officers, students’ union and institutional staff. Notably, a quarter of all respondents said that they would not report an Islamophobic incident. Other options selected by respondents included reporting to FOSIS, their ISoc and NUS. Women were less likely than men to report it to a number of options given apart from a member of academic or students’ union staff. They were also less likely to go to the police and it is of concern that they were more likely to not report it at all. Women wearing garments are significantly more likely to report it to an Islamic society (Isoc) than those who do not which potentially highlights a gap in how Muslim women who wear garments feel supported by established services, which elevates the significance of Isocs as alternative providers. Students with an understanding of Prevent also react to incidents of Islamophobic abuse or hate crime differently to those unware of the duty, being more likely to report it to their student sabbatical officer or ISoc, although there is no significant change in the likelihood that they will report it elsewhere. Considering the widespread fear of abuse, especially among visibly Muslim women, it is concerning that a quarter of respondents were not sure if there was a local hate crime reporting centre (whether on their campuses or nearby) that they could access. Our previous research into student experiences has indicated low levels of trust regarding reporting mechanisms (NUS 2012). It would be of benefit for victim support services to assess their engagement practices with Muslim women and identify how they might better address Muslim women’s needs. This is likely to include extending training to those who are likely to receive disclosures of hate crime, including ISoc committee members and academic staff.

Institutional responses to Islamophobia Muslim students’ levels of trust in the ability of their students’ union, educational institution or NUS in relation to handling allegations of Islamophobia were mixed, although 45 per cent would trust their students’ union and 42 per cent would trust their institution. However, nearly a quarter 194

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of respondents did not believe their institution would respond appropriately. Respondents were the most unsure about NUS’ ability to respond appropriately to Islamophobia – two-thirds were unclear on this or did not believe NUS would respond appropriately. Although only indicative due to a small sample size (29 respondents), 44 per cent of sabbatical officers disagreed that NUS would respond appropriately to allegations of Islamophobia if they arose, which contrasted with 20 per cent of the student respondents to the question. NUS Muslim representatives have faced disproportionate abuse over recent years and the NUS has not dealt with it adequately. (Woman, aged 22–23, higher education student) Awareness of Prevent correlates with students having less trust in the ability of their educational institution, students’ union and NUS to respond appropriately to allegations of Islamophobia. We additionally asked respondents who are positions of responsibility, such as president of an ISoc or a sabbatical officer, how they would deal with institutional Islamophobia.3 Half of these respondents said they would report it to another member of student union staff, and four out of ten would report it to institution staff. It is notable that even among this group of student leaders, one-fifth would not report institutional Islamophobia to others. Women were generally more likely than men to report such incidents.

Experiences online Half of all survey respondents had experienced some form of abuse or harassment online, primarily religious attacks and attacks against their personal views. The two online spaces where a majority of respondents had experienced abuse and harassment were Facebook (61 per cent) and Twitter (53 per cent). While respondents predominantly responded that they would not allow online abuse to prevent them from standing in student elections (two-thirds) or prevent them from using social networks (seven out of ten), there was an even split on whether or not they tried to keep a low profile online to avoid abuse or harassment. Women who wear a religious covering are significantly more likely to feel directly affected by social media abuse. Respondent’s levels of trust in organisations’ ability to handle online abuse followed a similar pattern to dealing with in-person Islamophobia, with four in ten believing that their students’ union or educational institution would respond appropriately to an incident of online abuse, but nearly half unclear whether NUS would do so. Women wearing religious garments were significantly less likely to agree their institution would respond appropriately (one in three compared to one in two for women who do not wear a covering). Sabbatical officer responses were clearer, as 46 per cent did not agree that NUS would respond appropriately to allegations of social media abuse, by contrast to 19 per cent of the student respondents to the question. Similarly, regarding their institution, 52 per cent of sabbatical officers did not agree that allegations of social media abuse would be dealt with appropriately, compared with 27 per cent. The lower levels of confidence among those most engaged within these organisations is deeply concerning and constitutes a trust deficit that, understood in line with respondents’ concerns around political activity and Prevent, may be in danger of leading to disengagement and disillusion.

Conclusion Prevent is a key issue for respondents’ ability to engage meaningfully with the structures of their institutions, unions and NUS, in particular around democratic engagement. It is particularly 195

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notable that being affected by Prevent has a negative impact on respondents’ engagement with political debates. This negative impact persists whether or not respondents articulated that fear around Prevent was the cause. This correlation demonstrates the chilling effect of Prevent, and that being affected by Prevent accompanies an erosion in trust of institutions who have responsibility to combat Islamophobia. It is particularly important to note the distinct ways that visibly Muslim women, those wearing a religious garment, are further marginalised in the classroom and in political debate by being both less comfortable with and less able to engage in debates on Prevent and terrorism, key issues that impact them and their communities. This may point to a heightened awareness of and concern about how others perceive them, especially if understood in line with Prevent findings that demonstrate higher levels of self-censorship and disengagement for fear of being reported. The data clearly demonstrates that experiences of hate-motivated incidents or crimes are widespread and under-reported. The amount of reporting needs to increase so that the scale of the problem can be understood and addressed. Pathways to reporting incidents vary, and NUS and student union interventions to tackle hate crime should reflect this. The impact of media portrayals on Muslim students and their willingness to take on leadership roles cannot be underestimated and an action plan to tackle negative representation that combines campaigning and also internal training for NUS and students’ union staff handling press and media contact for Muslim student leaders should be implemented as the unchecked Islamophobic rhetoric they face is seen to have a ripple effect across the movement. The propensity of visibly Muslim women to be directly impacted by social media abuse and representations of Muslims in the media must also be addressed. When coupled with their higher levels of fear of being attacked we can begin to understand and demonstrate how both serve to inhibit, oppress and silence them, discouraging them from being vocal, politically engaged and in leadership positions. The levels of discomfort and self-censorship felt across all respondents is no doubt aggravated by the simultaneous erosion of safe spaces to discuss and organise around the issues that most impact them, with Isocs considered as the last vestige and also the most trusted source of support. In the broader context of rising Islamophobia and its normalisation at every level, from government policy to rising hate crime and socioeconomic inequalities, the need for young Muslim leadership to shape the counter-narrative has never been more urgent. Gendered Islamophobia is a sombre reality for the student movement, and the triple penalty has been proven to impact their employment opportunities, rendering them the group most likely to be economically inactive in the UK (Women and Equalities Committee 2017). Muslim women must be front and centre of this fight and there is a specific need for leadership development opportunities for this demographic. The interplay between feelings of suspicion and targeting via Prevent, persistent challenges to their Muslim identities and a perceived inertia by their institutions to meaningfully tackle Islamophobia presents a very real risk to the educational, civic and political participation of Muslim students. It is therefore incumbent on students’ unions, NUS and education institutions to ensure that Muslims in all their diversity are able to access, engage and lead in our movement.

Notes 1 The definition of Islamophobia used in the survey is from Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for Us All, Runnymede Trust (2017, p. 1): ‘Islamophobia is any distinction, exclusion, or restriction towards, or preference against, Muslims (or those perceived to be Muslims) that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.’ 196

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2 For further discussion on the terminology of Prevent please see Preventing Prevent Handbook (NUS Black Students’ Campaign 2017). 3 While we did not define institutional Islamophobia, the question suggested that institutional Islamophobia included incidents ‘such as your work being sidelined or devalued, or not being treated the same as non Muslim officers’.

References BBC. 2018a. Punish a Muslim Day letters probed by terror police. Retrieved from www.bbc.co.uk/news/ uk-england-leeds-43356769 (accessed on 30 May 2018). BBC. 2018b. Rupa Huq is fourth MP to receive Islamophobia letter. Retrieved from www.bbc.co.uk/ news/uk-politics-43387152 (accessed on 30 May 2018). Independent. 2018. Muslim student’s ‘niqab veil ripped off’ in attack at King’s College London. Retrieved from www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/muslim-students-veil-ripped-off-in-attack-at-kingscollege-london-a6920886.html (accessed on 30 May 2018). Meyer, D. 2010. Evaluating the severity of hate-motivated violence: intersectional differences among LGBT hate crime victims. Sociology, 44, 980–995. Muslim Hands. 2017. Muslim Women in Prison. Retrieved from https://muslimhands.org.uk/_ui/uploads/ kqe5a9/MWIP_Report.pdf (accessed on 30 May 2018). NUS. 1999. Racism: a Light Sleeper. London: National Union of Students. NUS. 2012. No Place for Hate: Religion and Belief. Retrieved from www.nusconnect.org.uk/resources/ no-place-for-hate-religion-and-belief-report-may-2012 (accessed on 23 May 2018). London: National Union of Students. NUS. 2015. Preventing Prevent: We are Students not Suspects. London: National Union of Students. Retrieved from www.nusconnect.org.uk/campaigns/preventing-prevent-we-are-students-not-suspects (accessed 23 May 2018). NUS. 2018. The Experience of Muslim Students in 2017–18. London: National Union of Students. Retrieved from www.nusconnect.org.uk/resources/the-experience-of-muslim-students-in-2017-18 (accessed 23 May 2018] NUS Black Students’ Campaign, 2017. Preventing Prevent Handbook. London: National Union of Students. Retrieved from www.nusconnect.org.uk/resources/preventing-prevent-handbook (accessed 23 May 2018). NUS Women’s Campaign. 2018. Muslim Women in Education Briefing. London: National Union of Students. Retrieved from www.nusconnect.org.uk/resources/muslim-women-in-education-briefing. Roar News. 2018. Islamophobia at King’s: Muslim prayer room signs vandalised at Guy’s campus. Retrieved from http://roarnews.co.uk/?p=11364 (accessed 30 May 2018). Runnymede Trust. 2017. Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for Us All. London: Runnymede Trust. Social Mobility Commission. 2017. The Social Mobility Challenges Faced by Young Muslims. London: Social Mobility Commission. Retrieved from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/file/642220/Young_Muslims_SMC.pdf (accessed on 23 May 2018). Women and Equalities Committee. 2017. Employment Opportunities for Muslims in the UK. London: House of Commons. Retrieved from https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/ cmwomeq/89/89.pdf (accessed on 23 May 2018).

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16 Islamophobia in Greece The ‘Muslim threat’ and the panic about Islam Alexandros Sakellariou

Introduction The words Islam and Muslim, and their derivatives, are probably the words most used in public discourse during the last 20 years. As has been shown, however (Arjana 2015), already after the emergence and gradual expansion of the Islamic world, the West constructed the idea that Islam and Muslims constitute a threat and a frightening enemy. It comes as no surprise, then, that Islam and Muslims have been the protagonists of public debates, in politics and the media (Said 1981), mainly after the Iranian revolution and the ‘Rushdie affair’, and then again during the 1990s when the first discussions about the presence of Muslim communities in Europe and the issue of Islamophobia emerged (Runnymede Trust 1997), with 9/11 being a turning point.1 Scholars from a wide range of disciplines have tried to understand the presence of Islam in the West, the issue of Jihadism and Western reactions towards Muslims among others (Haddad 2002; Roy 2006; Khosrokhavar 2009; Cesari 2013; Nielsen 2016; Sonn 2016). Furthermore, since 2010 the ‘Arab Spring’, the emergence of the so-called Islamic State and the waves of refugees, mainly from Africa and the Middle East, boosted these debates about Islam and gave rise to Islamophobia in many Western societies. The purpose of this chapter is to examine if and to what extent Islamophobia is present in Greek society, its routes and nature, as well as its consequences through the following questions: Does Islamophobia exist in contemporary Greek society? Which are the main channels through which Islamophobia is being re-produced? Is Islamophobia influencing Muslims’ everyday lives and how? Which are the reasons behind Islamophobia and hate for Muslims? Building on the concepts of politics of fear and moral panics this chapter argues that Islam has been at the centre of a religious panic constructed by specific agents through the reproduction of an archaic fear for the ‘religious other’ and this has serious implications for religious freedom and equality within the Greek society.2

Politics of fear and moral panics According to Furendi (2006) the usage or over-usage of the term ‘fear’ does not indicate simply a reaction to a specific danger, but the use of broader cultural metaphors for interpreting and 198

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making sense of various experiences through a narrative of fear. The culture of fear increases the role of instability and exacerbates distinctions between the friendly ‘us’ and hostile ‘others’. These emotions may be deliberately used for political gains, but also in building a kind of national homogeneity and solidarity. Although in recent discourses the culture of fear is frequently connected to the rise of Islamist fundamentalism and the global war on terrorism, its roots descend from ancient times (Mölder 2011). The major impact of these discourses of fear is to promote a sense of disorder and a belief that ‘things are out of control’, implying that someone needs to take back control. As it is argued (Ferraro 1995, p. 12) ‘fear reproduces itself or becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy’ and is ‘being exploited by numerous claims-makers, including politicians, who promote their own propaganda about national and international politics’ (Altheide 2003, p. 10). Political fear is the peoples’ felt apprehension of some harm to their collective well-being or the intimidation wielded over men and women by governments, political parties and/or political groups. As Robin (2004, p. 16) has noted, political fear can work ‘when leaders or militants can define what is or ought to be the public’s chief object of fear’. Political fear of this sort almost always preys upon some real threat but politicians and other leaders have much leeway in deciding which threats are worthy of political attention and which are not. It is they who identify a threat to the population’s well-being, who interpret the nature and origins of that threat, and who propose a method for meeting that threat making particular fears items of public discussion and mobilisation. Based on the above, it is going to be argued that specific political agents within the Greek political spectrum, mainly of the extreme right, but not exclusively, similarly to other Western countries (Marzouki, McDonnell and Roy 2016), play with these fears of the Greek society and capitalise on the fear about Islam. The concept of politics of fear is related with the concept of moral panic. Modern times in general are ‘the age of the moral panic’ (Thompson 1998, p. 1) and the media continually warn of the possible dangers of moral laxity. These dangers evoke different things at different times – panics over crime, activities of youth, anti-social behaviour, ‘sexual permissiveness’ of the 1960s, subversion of traditional family values, the image of the young black mugger, and many others. Such panic plays and capitalises on the fears of the majority (Thompson 1998; Cohen 1972; Goode and Ben-Yehuda 2009). Nowadays, this panic is increasingly shifting towards ‘aberrant’ behaviours of Muslims constructing this way a panic about a specific religion or what could be named a religious panic. It is indeed accurate to argue that ‘Muslims in the West have emerged as the new “folk devils” of both popular and media imagination’ (Zempi and Chakraborti 2014, p. 24). In the Greek context, this kind of panic relates to the broader historical legacies of the creation of the Greek nation-state after centuries of Ottoman rule. Not only was the Greek state established as an ‘Orthodox’ political entity, but it was also created as an antidote of the Ottoman occupation and its religion, Islam. This experience of state-building has shaped a dichotomous long-standing discourse between national Orthodox ‘self’ against the Islamic ‘other’ and it has to be taken into consideration when one studies the place of Islam in Greek society and the issue of Islamophobia. This panic about Islam is reproduced not only from political agents but also from leading figures of the Orthodox Church of Greece.

Studying Islamophobia: practical issues, the method and the material Islamophobia has been extensively studied during the last 20 years but mainly after 9/11 (Runnymede Trust 1997; Fekete 2009; Esposito and Kalin 2011; Morgan and Poynting 2012; Tyrer 2013; Ernst 2013; Pratt and Woodlock 2016), without avoiding controversial debates about its meaning and definition. According to a recent definition Islamophobia is ‘a fear or 199

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hatred of Islam that translates into ideological and material forms of cultural racism against obvious markers of “Muslimness”’ (Zempi and Chakraborti 2015, p. 46). When it comes to the types of Islamophobia, Sayyid (2014) has underlined six clusters of Islamophobic activities: • • • • • •

attacks on persons; attacks on property; intimidation; institutional; comments, public discourse; and state.

Therefore, Islamophobia could be divided into two main categories: ideology and activism (discourse and assaults). The absence of Islamophobic physical acts does not make Islamophobia a ‘myth’. Islamophobic ideology and discourse are key-factors for any kind of Islamophobic attacks, which do not occur in an ideological vacuum. In more practical terms, one crucial problem in Greece is the lack of evidence regarding Islamophobia, especially when it comes to recording assaults. Reports in Greece usually count xenophobic and racist attacks with no particular focus on the religious motivation,3 perhaps because in most of the cases it is not clear. Attacks against immigrants, for example, which during the second half of 2017 were on the rise in Aspropyrgos, a region near Athens, though mainly targeted Muslims, it is not always easy to count them as clearly Islamophobic, although probably the most appropriate way is to count them both as xenophobic and Islamophobic. These kinds of acts are not as clear as attacking a masjid, an Ottoman mosque or an Imam.4 That is why in this chapter Islamophobic acts are taken into consideration, but due to their scarcity the main focus will be given at the discourse level. Besides, before someone proceeds to an attack he/she has been somehow ideologically influenced by Islamophobic discourses and that is why the issue of Islamophobic ideology and discourses is very important. The material used for the analysis comes mainly from the media, the Internet, the websites of specific political parties and groups, the Orthodox Church of Greece and the Greek Parliament. The method applied to analyse the material is the classic content analysis, based upon thematic categories (Grawitz 2004; Kyriazi 2001). As it has been argued, ‘discourse contributes to the composition of the rules and regulations of social life as well as of relations, identities and institutions’ (Fairclough 1992, p. 65), therefore, discourse has become a very important tool for social scientists in their efforts to study and understand society and social relationships.

Constructing the fear about Islam: the threat of Islamisation Immigration Greece is home to different Muslim communities, which are divided into two main groups. First, there is the Muslim minority of Thrace, located in the northeastern part of Greece consisting of about 120,000 Muslims inhabiting the region together with a Greek Christian majority (Tsitselikis 1999; Ktistakis 2006; Katsikas 2012). This group constitutes ‘Old Islam’, and is visibly different from the recent waves of Muslim immigrants who are considered ‘New Islam’ (Tsitselikis 2012). The second group is generally composed of Muslim immigrants,5 who, far from being a unified group, belong to different nationalities. Although other ethno-religious communities already existed in Greek society, their number was rather negligible until 1991, when thousands of immigrants started arriving in Greece following the collapse of communism 200

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in neighbouring Albania. Since then, Greek society has seen substantial increases of Muslim immigrants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East arriving in Greece primarily via Turkey.6 This change in terms of cultural and religious synthesis of the population has created a reaction from those parts within the Greek society in favour of the country’s national identity and homogeneity. Similarly to other cases (in the USA and Europe)7 the fear of Islamisation has been at the forefront of the public debates in the last 15 years. Such discourses started to dominate the public space through a narrative of panic about immigrants since 2000 with the establishment of the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS).8 In 2001 the party’s leader inaugurating the main offices in Syntagma square declared that among the party’s goals was to fight against globalisation and the thousands of immigrants coming to Greece. Using the politics of fear strategy and a narrative of panic he argued that more than a million immigrants are going to be legalised, meaning receiving the Greek citizenship, altering this way the synthesis of the population and threatening the Orthodox religion.9 After the party’s entrance in the Parliament in 2007 such discourses continued being reproduced. According to one of LAOS’s MPs, immigrants from Asia and Africa are characterised by ‘strong Muslim attributes and terrifying birth indicators’ (Parliament Proceedings, 24 June 2009, Session H [8], p. 586), implying that this is a direct threat for the synthesis of the population and, as a consequence, for the national identity. Multiculturalism was painted with dark colours while MPs of LAOS attempted to reproduce fears towards a multicultural future in opposition to Greek national identity, its values and principles: What kind of society do we want? Do we want a national society, as we know it, keeping as the dominant element the values and principles of the Greek nation and culture or do we want a multicultural society? Do we want Athens to be a city where women will walk around wearing burkas, with mosques and huge minarets, with different languages spoken or do we want a society as we know it with one dominant nation? (Parliament Proceedings, 10 March 2010, Session ΠΑ [81], p. 4788) The above excerpt illustrates the construction of fear through the usage of extravagant phrases including the symbolic words burkas, mosques and minarets. According to the extreme-right party of Golden Dawn (GD),10 which somehow took the leading role in such discourses after the collapse of LAOS, and is one of the most significant agents of Islamophobia in Greece, immigrants are a direct threat for Europe, Greece and the ‘white race’: Asian peoples invade Europe threatening to alter the synthesis of its population. After that, the spirit of Islam and its traditions will dominate. Within a multicultural world the winner will be the race, the population that will dominate over the other. Now, Muslims fight to dominate biologically and become a majority in Europe. The shrinking of the White World has been prepared. (Golden Dawn 2013a) Today Muslims in Europe are a minority but very soon will be the majority. . . . In Greece, if this rise of immigrants continues, Muslims will be around 30–50 per cent of the population within one generation. (Golden Dawn 2013b) The new thing that GD introduces is a clear and open reference to biology and race, while in the previous years the main focus was on the cultural aspects of this so-called Islamisation 201

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process. One of GD’s MPs argued that Greece will become Islamised and Greeks will listen to the muezzin from the minarets, experiencing a new Ottoman rule in this way, but GD would fight against this Islamisation of Greece because ‘this is something that contradicts Greek tradition and culture’ (Parliament Proceedings, 27 April 2015, Session ΚΗ [28], p. 49; Parliament Proceedings, 8 May 2015, Session ΛΗ [38], p. 264). The function of politics of fear is clear at this point, since GD describes a situation that is out of control with regard to Muslim immigrants and through this clear division between ‘us’ and ‘them’ argues that the party’s purpose is to take back control and protect Greek people’s well-being. Such views are found throughout smaller political parties of the extreme and populist right. Christos Nikolopoulos, who is now an independent MP but was formerly an MP of ANEL11 and before that of New Democracy, the conservative party, has also argued that through refugees, Islam threatens to alter the Christian synthesis of the Greek and European populations. Another example is the new party founded in 2016 by Failos Kranidiotis, a former member of New Democracy, called ‘The New Right’. In its statutes it is clearly stated that the party will pursue among other things to ‘become a wall against the Islamic danger for Europe’.12 Furthermore, a right-wing newspaper, Dimocratia (‘Democracy’) hosts his articles on a regular basis and through those he manages to address to the right-wing supporters reproducing his Islamophobic discourses.13 It is not only the extreme right however, that reproduces Islamophobic discourses in the political field. MPs of New Democracy since the 2000s already and after LAOS’s success started to have similar views arguing for example that ‘a person is losing his/her autonomy within multicultural societies’ and ‘our society will be divided’ with all these Muslim immigrants (Parliament Proceedings, 10 March 2010, Session ΠΑ [81], p.4817). More recently, during the so-called refugee crisis, in the island of Lesvos, a local party member has made a call through his Facebook page for the establishment of a citizen’s movement against the policies of Islamisation of Greece and his island, in particular, due to the high numbers of refugees and immigrants (Anon 2016a). In the same island another local member of New Democracy through her personal blog argued that ‘Lesvos is under attack; Lesvos is being Islamised’ (Machaira 2016). While a visceral opposition to, and demonisation of Islam lies at the epicentre of the contemporary extreme right’s ideological profile and political message it has been argued accurately (Kallis 2015) that what may have started as an ideology of hatred toward Muslims from the fringes of the political system has become part of an increasingly acceptable attitude shared by ever-broader segments of mainstream European societies and this could be the case for Greece as well. From the above examples it can be argued that Islamophobic discourses are not a monopoly of GD or of extreme-right parties only, but can be observed in other parties of the right as well.14 Immigration is considered a direct cause for the Islamisation of the country and that is why political parties and groups of nationalists have organised demonstrations and rallies against it (e.g. in Oraiokastro near Thessaloniki, in Samos and elsewhere). In other cases, parents refused to send their children to school in case refugee children were going to attend it (Brattou 2016). GD especially has organised rallies and demonstrations mainly in Athens and Piraeus against immigrants and refugees and against the construction of the mosque in Athens. In the party’s calls it is mentioned that Greece’s Islamisation is developing very fast and that Greeks are becoming a minority within their country (Golden Dawn 2016). It has to be noted that some attacks have been recorded against the camps, which were established for immigrants and refugees during recent years. In some cases groups of people threw pigs’ heads in the camps so that Muslims do not go (Anon 2016b).15 Apart from politics the Orthodox Church of Greece has also expressed its ‘agony’ about the high number of Muslims in Greek society.16 The Metropolitan of Thessaloniki, Anthimos, for example, has stated that it is horrible that today almost 700,000 Muslims live in Athens, adding 202

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that these people are actually a problem for Greece, since the country is going to become full of Al Qaeda’s groupings (Anon 2010). Even the so-called moderate Archbishop Ieronymos has argued that indeed there is a danger of Islamisation from the immigrants and refugees and that in case these people finally stay in Greece, ‘the country will lose the Greek neighbourhood, this beauty of life, what we used to say, that we are a clean country’.17 In that direction, the Metropolis of Thessaloniki, Orthodox Christian groups and the Panhellenic Union of Theologians organised an event in Thessaloniki in 2016 against the Islamisation of Greece and Europe.18 Immigration, as a consequence, like in other Western countries, is the key theme and the axis on which Islamophobic discourses and activism are based on. The ‘religious other’ is targeted as the main threat and is used by political parties, politicians and religious agents in order to establish the politics of fear and a moral panic for Muslims indiscriminately, who are presented as a threat to the national identity and homogeneity.

The mosque of Athens Closely related to immigration is the issue of the construction of the mosque of Athens. Muslims who live in the urban areas of Athens lack official places to pray and are therefore obliged to meet in warehouses or basements of buildings in order to exercise their religious duties; in other words, they are treated as an ‘invisible’ religious community (Sakellariou 2011). The construction of a mosque in Athens has a long history and has raised serious debates and reactions from the Orthodox Church and specific political parties and politicians (Triandafyllidou and Gropas 2009; Anagnostou and Gropas 2010; Sakellariou 2017a).19 On the political level, while almost all the political parties have agreed on the need for a proper mosque for Muslims in Athens there is a delay in its construction. Of course, after the first law about the construction of a mosque in 2000, 9/11 and the subsequent rise of the extreme-right followed and this changed the political climate giving space to the politics of fear, while many politicians who were in favour of the mosque then started to have second thoughts. The main parties reacting to the mosque of Athens were LAOS, Independent Greeks (ANEL) and of course GD (Sakellariou 2017a). Large demonstrations against the construction of the Islamic mosque in Athens have been organised, mainly by GD, their main slogan being: ‘No, to an Islamic mosque, neither in Athens, nor in any other place’. Parliamentary questions have also been asked about the money that was going to be used for the construction of the mosque, while ancient Greek temples and Greek Orthodox churches remain abandoned. It is in parliamentary debates that one can find the construction of fear regarding the mosque of Athens. Similar to other cases around Europe (Cesari 2005), the main arguments are that the mosque will attract criminals and fundamentalists and will also contribute into the degradation of the region and the radicalisation of Muslims (Golden Dawn 2017a; Sakellariou 2017a). A few Church officials have positioned themselves against the construction of an Islamic mosque in Athens, as well. According to Ambrosios, the Metropolitan of Kalavryta, ‘the construction of a mosque somewhere in Athens using state money, i.e. the money of the Greek Orthodox people, is just the beginning of the Islamic territorial domination against our country’ (Ambrosios 2013). The Metropolitan of Piraeus, has also argued against the construction of a mosque in Athens. In his encyclical letter after the attack against the Coptic Church in Egypt, after describing Islam as a destructive cult, and claiming that Islam is not compatible with the Greek Constitution, he asked the Greek government to withdraw the law concerning the construction of an Islamic mosque, because of its unconstitutional content; otherwise, he argued, the government would be responsible for similar criminal acts in Greece by fundamentalist Islamists (Serafeim 2011). Despite the above examples, the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church never 203

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took an openly hostile stance against Islam and Muslims on the whole or against the construction of the mosque, but it also never strongly disapproved of these statements and announcements.20 When it comes to Muslim communities in Europe the quest for public space and the debates about mosques and minarets is not a Greek exception (Alievi 2009).21 Those agents who are against the establishment of the mosque seem to follow the international example creating a link between immigration, mosques and terrorism. In that sense the construction of a mosque in Athens, the only European capital without an official mosque, is instrumentalised and becomes part of the politics of fear agenda.

The role of history: Turkey This whole panic about Islam draws on and reverberates, at least in part, the fear about national security and the rise of fundamentalism worldwide. In this context, Turkey takes a special place given its connotations as an ‘eternal enemy’ of the Greek nation. For many Greeks, moreover, Turkey and Islam is one and the same. The Orthodox Church has a crucial role in reproducing the stereotype, that Islam and Turkey are identical, while claiming that the rise of Muslim immigrants or the construction of a mosque are related to the danger that emanates from Turkey (Sakellariou 2015a). This fear about Turkey comes to the forefront in many occasions. In 2010, for example, the Greek government gave permission to the Muslims of Athens to celebrate Ramadan in a central square of the city. The Metropolitan of Piraeus, in his encyclical letter (Serafeim 2010) argued that this was unacceptable and caused him real pain, because it was the first time since the war of independence against the Turks in 1821 that Muslims celebrated Ramadan in a public space, connecting this way the historical past with the needs of Muslim immigrants. Ambrosios, the metropolitan of Kalavryta, in his message for Christmas of 2013 wrote: In this way, what the President of Turkey, Turgut Ozal, once said, will be gradually implemented: ‘we will dominate Europe through the birth of Turks’. In a few years we will be foreigners in our land! . . . So, Greece is coming to an end. The Greek population is getting smaller, while the Islamists are growing very fast!. (Ambrosios 2013) A controversial statement of a former Turkish president interrelates with the problem of immigration in order to excite people’s national(-ist) instincts and reproduce fear about Islam. The menace from Turkey was not an important issue in the political field and in the parliamentary debates with regard to the mosque issue until 2006, given the broad consensus regarding the necessity of the mosque. The electoral success of extreme right-wing and populist parties in recent years has placed the danger of Turkey more prominently, and has now emerged as one of the most powerful arguments against the construction of a mosque. After the electoral collapse of LAOS, GD has become the major player expressing concerns that relate the fear of Islam with Turkey. Indeed, the GD MPs do not miss any opportunity to vocalise fear and religious panic whenever there is a parliamentary discussion regarding the mosque, the immigration issue or any other issue that might be slightly related. The party complains against the government, which is seen as too open towards Turkey: You want to eliminate values like fatherland, religion, family, Orthodoxy. You are the best companion of our enemy, Turkey, which is very happy seeing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants coming to Greece. (Parliament Proceedings, 24 June 2015, Session ΞΒ [62], p. 264) 204

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The above could lead to two main conclusions. First, when the international climate changes and when a new player (Golden Dawn) enters the political field, the historical past re-emerges and acts as an important parameter on the whole issue of Islamophobia. Second, these three parameters (i.e. immigration, the mosque and Turkey) are interconnected and form a nexus on which Islamophobia in Greek society is built.

The causes of fear: a clash of civilisations? Immigration, the mosque and the role of Turkey form a first level of explanation. But is there anything that goes deeper in the Islamophobia field and used by political agents and Church figures in order to justify their negative views against Islam and Muslims? How they try to support their negation to immigration and the construction of a mosque in Athens? The above discourses are actually reproducing a Manichean scheme of the good ‘Us’ and bad ‘Them’. But is there a content attributed to ‘them’? The main argument clearly follows the clash of civilisation thesis of S. Huntington, and is based on two main issues which dominate these kinds of discourses: First, ‘the inherent barbaric and violent character of Islam’, and second Islam’s ‘inferiority as a religion’ according to some Church officials. The Islamic threat that features in public debates is grounded on incidents that take place around the world and especially in Muslim countries, which are presented as another example of the ‘Islamic danger’ and ‘Islam’s brutality’. The Metropolitan of Kalvryta, Ambrosios, in a 2012 message referred to the civil war in Syria and the killing of a Christian Orthodox priest by Islamists underlying the brutality of the incident. In his view, Islam is violent by nature and this is proved by the fact that the Koran includes Jihad and it leads Muslims to massacre everyone who is not Muslim, based on the premise that non-Muslims are considered infidels (Ambrosios 2012). The Metropolitan of Piraeus, Serafeim, has also argued that Islam is violent by nature and managed to expand through the use of war violence, of knives and murders based on the jihad (Serafeim 2017). GD also considers Islam as absolutely violent in nature. They use as an example the attacks of Muslim terrorist groups (Al Qaeda; Daesh) around the world and of course in Europe, as well as various incidents from Muslim countries, to support their argument (Golden Dawn 2017b). Parallel to mentioning bomb attacks worldwide they strive to create a climate of fear through the use of the phrase ‘soon in Greece’, implying that we will soon have similar attacks in Greece (Golden Dawn 2017c). Anything that happens in a Muslim country is used to reproduce panic, through the use of words such as ‘massacre, Islamist cannibals, barbaric Islam, obscurantist Islam’, and others. They frequently use the words ‘terrorism, terrorist, terroristic’, in such a way that their audiences are easily influenced. For them, ‘the relationship between Islam and terrorism proves itself every day’ (Golden Dawn 2013c). Finally, they make ample use of the names of Islamic cities like Kabul, Kandahar or Islamabad to make people afraid that with all these Muslim immigrants, sooner or later, Greece will become a Muslim country with all the drawbacks that such a transformation will entail: violence, killings, rapes and brutality. According to the party’s discourse, Islam’s goal is to strengthen Islamic religious and cultural traditions, and its main weapon is jihad (Antepithesi 2013).22 Muslims are considered as uncivilised, they do not respect women and human rights, and their education is only based on ‘the green small book with the golden letters on the front-cover, which leads them to extreme actions and terrorism, because for them, the Koran is the only real book and all the other are lies’ (Golden Dawn 2013d). Islam is also seen as inferior to Christianity and incompatible with the Greek-Christian civilisation, because it is not considered a true religion and Mohamed is not a real prophet. As written back in 1997 by an archimandrite, ‘during the centuries many false prophets existed, 205

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people not actually called by God. An example of such a false godsend prophet who was very successful. . .was Mohamed’ (Kastoris 1997, p. 51). The Metropolitan of Piraeus (Serafeim 2010) in an encyclical letter argued that Islam is a fallacy and a human creation and it has nothing to do with the real God that was revealed in the Old Testament. Furthermore, he argued that the true God does not force people to follow Him, implying that Allah is not a true God since he uses violence in order to force people to follow him, while he has also supported the argument that Mohammad is a fake prophet and the Koran a fake book (Serafeim 2017). Apart from the above arguments, which are clearly hostile towards Islam and Muslims, others are trying to use more mild arguments. According to these views the emphasis is given to the different culture Muslims have, which of course does not exclude the role of violence mentioned above and somehow reproduces the clash of civilisations thesis. This means that it is not possible for Muslims to live and integrate in Western societies and as a consequence in Greek society. MPs of the right-wing party of New Democracy, for example, have argued that ‘Muslims are against the western way of life’ (Parliament Proceedings, 24 June 2015, Session ΞΒ [62], p. 71), implying that it is almost impossible for Muslims to live together with a Christian majority. Along similar lines, MPs of ANEL have argued that ‘Muslims can’t be acculturated and adjusted to Greek society’ (Parliament Proceedings, 12 May 2015, Session Μ [40], p. 176). Ultimately, according to the extreme right and the right-wing discourse, either from political parties or the Orthodox Church, Islam and Muslims are seen as a threat to the national identity and Greek-Orthodox values since they are coming from a complete ‘other’ culture and way of life, which are incompatible with the Greek one. This argumentation is clearly Islamophobic because it generalises events like Islamist terrorist attacks, for example, and uses them in order to characterise Islam and Muslims as violent. As it has been argued (Wodak 2015) such parties instrumentalise a minority group, in this case the Muslim one, as a scapegoat for most if not all current woes and subsequently construe the respective group as a threat to ‘us’, to ‘our’ nation which is at the core of politics of fear.

Conclusions Islam and Muslims have been one of the main groups scapegoated and targeted as a ‘threatening other’ in Greece. The main conclusions that can be drawn regarding Islamophobia in Greek society are the following. First, Islamopohobia in Greece is not as serious as in other European countries especially when it comes to assaults against Muslims or Islamic places. However, on the discourse level Islamophobia is present and thus one can speak of an Islamophobia ‘under construction’, to which special attention should be paid. Second, although Islamophobia does exist, this does not mean that it dominates Greek politics, the Orthodox Church and society on the whole. One can find strong Islamophobic discourses, but at the same time, there are people and political parties trying to confront it, and support and protect Muslims, both natives and immigrants. Third, Islamophobia is primarily found in the extreme-right and then in the right-wing political parties and groups, but also among significant Church figures even some of the Metropolitans of the Orthodox Church. Fourth and summarising the above three conclusions, it is evident that the Greek case follows the Western Islamophobic pattern in terms of who are the main agents and which are the main arguments (namely, terrorism, violence, clash of civilisations). The only difference is that in the Greek case, Turkey as a neighbouring country plays an important role in the Islamophobic discussions either as a path for immigrants and refugees or as an Islamic country per se threatening the very existence of the Greek nation. Fifth, Islamophobia as in any other country has serious implications on issues of human rights of Muslims, since the fear of Islam has been used in order to put obstacles to the construction 206

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of the mosque in Athens and also to the establishment of the Muslim cemetery which is still under question. Finally, as it comes out from existing opinion polls from 2010 onwards Greek society has little knowledge of what Islam is (Public Issue 2010) and expresses negative views about Islam, Muslims and the construction of the mosque (Dianeosis 2015, 2016a, 2016b; Lipka 2016).23 It is not clear which and if so how important the role of Islamophobic discourses are in the formation of such views among the Greek population, although attention should be paid both by researchers and policy makers to a phenomenon that might be under construction, but which seem to have serious implications for the life of Muslims in Greece.

Notes 1 Recently a new report on Islamophobia from Runnymede Trust was published on the anniversary of the 20 years from the first report (Runnymede Trust 2017). 2 Taking into consideration the given space of the chapter, but also the limited evidence available, not all aspects of Islamophobia in Greek society are going to be fully presented and analysed. The main focus will be on those aspects which seem to dominate the public space, without implying that Islamophobia is not found in other domains like for example in state authorities and institutions (e.g. the police, the secret service) or the media. However, and based on the available findings, a selection needed to be made. 3 The Racist Violence Recording Network usually records few racist attacks based on a religious motive, while primarily race, colour, country of origin are described as motives. Similarly the Police records racist incidents with few of them mentioned as having a religious motivation (24 out of 84 for 2016). See http://rvrn.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Report_2016gr.pdf (accessed 20 November 2017). 4 Since October 2017 a new extremist group emerged in Athens, under the name of ‘Crypteia’ inspired by an ancient Spartan group. They claimed an attack against the house of a little Afghan boy who was chosen to participate in the national celebrations of 28 October holding the Greek flag, although the school administration decided otherwise and then they also claimed an attack against two Muslim immigrants, one of them being an Imam, in November 2017. For these see www.thetoc.gr/koinwnia/ article/omada-krupteia-i-fasistiki-organwsi-pou-xtupaei-metanastes (accessed 4 December 2017). 5 The national census does not select data on religious affiliation. Any estimation is based on the nationalities declared in the census and on unofficial data, for example from interviews with representatives of Muslim organisations. 6 During the summer of 2015 thousands of refugees and immigrants gathered for many days and sometimes weeks in other regions of Greece, mainly the Aegean Islands and along the borders with Balkan states, waiting to be transferred to other European countries. By December 2015 more than 800,000 refugees and immigrants came to Greece searching for a path to other European destinations. For more information see www.iom.int/news/irregular-migrant-refugee-arrivals-europe-top-onemillion-2015-iom (accessed 20 November 2017). The situation came to a dead-end during March of 2016 when Eastern and Central Europe countries decided to close their borders even for Syrian and Iraqi refugees and these people were blocked in Greece. Today it is estimated that about 55,000 refugees and immigrants have been blocked in Greece (data of October 2017), see http://migration. iom.int/europe (accessed 20 November 2017). 7 See for example the Stop Islamisation of America (SIOA) and Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) initiatives. In Greece there have been some Facebook pages with similar content, e.g.‘Stop Islam in Greece’ or ‘We say NO to the Islamisation of Greece’. 8 Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) was an extreme-right party founded by a former MP of the conservative New Democracy party in 2000 and had a continuous presence in the Parliament until the elections of 2012. 9 See his speech at www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnHNZuYg8xg (accessed 4 December 2017). 10 Golden Dawn is a political party of National-Socialist ideology and history which achieved an electoral breakthrough in mainstream politics since 2010 in the local elections of Athens and in the national elections of 2012 becoming the third political power (Koronaiou et al. 2015a, 2015b; Sakellariou 2015b). 11 Independent Greeks (ANEL) is a populist right-wing party founded also by a former New Democracy MP in 2012 and now participates in the coalition government. For some the party belongs to the extreme right because of its views on immigration, national issues, relations with neighbouring 207

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12 13 14

15 16

1 7 18 19

20 21 22 23

countries, etc. The party voted against the construction of the mosque of Athens and expressed its skepticism regarding the dangers that might come from such a development based on what is taking place in Europe with regard to the terrorist attacks of the last years. The New Right, http://neadexia.gr/katastatiko (accessed 20 November 2017). It should be mentioned that Dimocratia is one of those media including Islamophobic articles written by journalists or political commentators on a regular basis. As it has been supported there is also a kind of Islamophobia coming from the liberal spectrum of the public sphere through the texts and writings of well-known authors like Takis Theodoropoulos and Soti Triandafyllou and neo-liberal politicians like Andreas Andrianopoulos and Thanos Tzimeros (Sakellariou 2015b; Hatzipanagiotou and Zarikos 2017). Golden Dawn’s members and MPs have been accused and some even sentenced of racist attacks against immigrants and refugees from 2010 onwards in various neighbourhoods of Athens. One of the first actors that initiated such a public discourse of religious panic in modern times was Christodoulos, the Archbishop of the Orthodox Church from 1998 to 2008) during the war in the former Yugoslavia. According to Christodoulos, the Yugoslav war was a plan organised by the Vatican, the West and Turkey in order to form an Islamic arc in the Balkans and in the future, a Muslim state. He wrote several articles in Greek newspapers under the titles: ‘The Muslim curtain in the Balkans’ and ‘The volcano of Islamism: The lava that ‘burns’ the Balkans’, to mention just a few of them (Vassilakis 2006). For the entire interview see www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eSJySedZ9M (accessed 16 November 2017). The video of this can be found in the following link www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TsY9gqg5qg (accessed 16 November 2017). Mosques exist only in Thrace, where the Muslim community lives and in the islands of Kos and Rhodes in the Aegean. At the moment the first official mosque in Athens is under construction after many delays which lasted more than a decade, since the latest law was voted by the Greek Parliament in 2006.There are also three other private mosques functioning legally since 2015 and all the others are considered at least semi-legal since they function having a permit of a cultural association or other and not that of a religious place. The same problem exists with the lack of a Muslim cemetery in Athens, which obliges relatives of the deceased to transport them either to Northern Thrace or to the country of their origin. Although not a repeated phenomenon it should be noted that in previous years some attacks have been recorded against prayer houses and mosques in Athens and Thrace, either through arson attacks or throwing pig heads in front of the places (Sakellariou 2016, 2017b). For more cases regarding mosques in Europe see also the special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 31(6), November 2005. Antepithesi is the official website of the youth branch of Golden Dawn and one can find many ideological texts, comments and other texts uploaded on a regular basis. In a recent survey 40.8 per cent of the interviewees said that they would be disturbed by the establishment a mosque in Greece as opposed to 58.6 per cent who said no and probably no. Furthermore, when people were asked if they would be disturbed by the construction of a mosque in the area they live 45.1 per cent replied yes and probably yes, while 54.4 per cent answered no and probably no (Dianeosis 2016a). According to another survey regarding the current refugee crisis it appears that the words ‘Islam, Muslim, Jihad’ have negative connotations and that a terrorist attack in Greece is possible (Dianeosis 2016b).

References Alievi, S. 2009. Conflicts over Mosques in Europe. London: Network of European Foundations. Altheide, L. D. 2003. Mass media, crime and the discourse of fear. The Hedgehog Review, 5(3), 9–25. Ambrosios. 2012. Islam is coming, Greece is vanishing. Metropolitan of Kalavryta blog. Retrieved from http://mkka.blogspot.gr/2012/11/blog-post_12.html (accessed 4 December 2017) [in Greek]. Ambrosios. 2013. Goodbye Greece, goodbye Holy Orthodoxy, Christmas public message. Metropolitan of Kalavryta blog. Retrieved from http://mkka.blogspot.gr/2013/12/blog-post_23.html (accessed 4 December 2017) [in Greek]. Anagnostou, D. and Gropas, R. 2010. Domesticating Islam and Muslim immigrants: Political and Church responses to constructing a central mosque in Athens. In: Roudometof, V. and Makrides, V. eds. Orthodox Christianity in 21st Century Greece. Farnham: Ashgate 2010. pp. 89–109. 208

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Anon. 2010. Vartholomeos and Ieronymos supporting immigrants. To Vima, 2 February. Retrieved from www.tovima.gr/politics/article/?aid=312912 (accessed 14 November 2017) [in Greek]. Anon. 2016a. New Democracy official calls citizens against the Muslimisation of Lesvos. TVXS, 15 September. Retrieved from http://tvxs.gr/news/eyropi-eop/stelexos-tis-nd-kalei-toys-polites-enantiasti-moysoylmanopoiisi-tis-lesboy (accessed 20 November 2017) [in Greek]. Anon. 2016b. Tension in Veroia for the refugee camp: They have thrown pig heads. TVXS, 26 March. Retrieved from http://tvxs.gr/news/ellada/entasi-sti-beroia-gia-kentro-prosfygon-petaksan-goyroy nokefali-binteo (accessed 20 November 2017) [in Greek]. Antepithesi. 2013. Islamic cells. Retrieved from http://antepithesi.gr/index.php?option=com_k2&view= item&id=1192:islamikoi-pyrines&Itemid=288 (accessed 20 November 2013) [in Greek]. Arjana, S.-R. 2015. Muslims in the western imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. Brattou, F. 2016. Domino of reactions regarding refugee children at schools. Kathimerini, 1 October. Retrieved from www.kathimerini.gr/877391/article/epikairothta/ellada/ntomino-antidrasewn-giata-prosfygopoyla-sta-sxoleia (accessed 20 November 2017) [in Greek]. Cesari, J. 2005. Mosque conflicts in European cities: Introduction. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 31(6), 1015–1024. Cesari, J. 2013. Why the West Fears Islam: An Exploration of Muslims in Liberal Democracies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Cohen, S. 1972. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London: McGibbon and Kee. Dianeosis. 2015. What Greeks believe. Retrieved from www.dianeosis.org/2016/02/what_greeks_ believe_post (accessed 25 November 2017) [in Greek]. Dianeosis. 2016a. The Greeks and the refugee problem. Retrieved from www.dianeosis.org/wp-content/ uploads/2016/02/immigration_04.pdf (accessed 25 November 2017) [in Greek]. Dianeosis. 2016b. What Greeks believe. Retrieved from www.dianeosis.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/ 02/ti_pistevoun_oi_ellines_spreads_C.pdf (accessed 25 November 2017) [in Greek]. Ernst, W. C. 2013. Islamophobia in America: The Anatomy of intolerance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Esposito, J. and Kalin, I. (eds). 2011. Islamophobia: The Challenge of Pluralism in the 21st Century. New York: Oxford University Press. Fairclough, N. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fekete, L. 2009. A Suitable Enemy: Racism, Migration and Islamophobia in Europe. London: Pluto Press. Ferraro, F. K. 1995. Fear of Crime: Interpreting Victimization Risk. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Furendi, F. 2006. Culture of fear Revisited. London: Continuum. Golden Dawn. 2013a. Islam in front of the gates of Europe. Retrieved from www.xryshaygh.com/ enimerosi/view/to-islam-pro-twn-pulwn-ths-eurwphs (accessed 20 November 2017) [in Greek]. Golden Dawn. 2013b. Muslims will be the majority in Europe very soon. Retrieved from http://xa-aitoloak arnanias.blogspot.gr/2013/07/blog-post_30.html?m=0 (accessed 20 November 2017) [in Greek]. Golden Dawn. 2013c. Co-operation: Islamic Fundamentalism and Terrorism. Retrieved from www. xryshaygh.com/enimerosi/view/sunergasia-islamikos-fontamentalismos-kai-tromokratia (accessed 20 November 2017) [in Greek]. Golden Dawn. 2013d. The Anti-Hellenism Left and Islam. Retrieved from www.xryshaygh.com/ enimerosi/view/h-ellhnikh-aristera-kai-to-islam (accessed 20 November 2017) [in Greek]. Golden Dawn. 2016. Rally against the Islamisation of our country. Retrieved from www.xryshaygh.com/ enimerosi/view/sugkentrwsh-enantia-sthn-islamopoihsh-ths-patridas-mas-peiraias-paraskeuh-8 (accessed 20 November 2017) [in Greek]. Golden Dawn. 2017a. Home stretch for the ‘jihadist nest’ in Votanikos. The board is ready, the construction is proceeding. Retrieved from http://www.xryshaygh.com/enimerosi/view/sthn-telikh-eutheiato-tzami-ston-botaniko-sustathhke-to-dioikhtiko-sumboul (accessed 4 December 2017) [in Greek]. Golden Dawn. 2017b. The role of the Imam in the terrorist attack in Barcelona. Imagine what will happen to Greece. Retrieved from www.xryshaygh.com/enimerosi/view/o-rolos-tou-imamh-sto-tromok ratiko-chtuphma-ths-barkelwnhs-fantasteite-ti-e (accessed 4 December 2017) [in Greek]. Golden Dawn. 2017c. A matter of time the first Islamic terrorist attack on Greek soil. Retrieved from www. xryshaygh.com/enimerosi/view/thema-chronou-h-prwth-islamikh-tromokratikh-epithesh-epiellhnikou-edafou (accessed 4 December 2017) [in Greek]. Goode, E. and Ben-Yehuda, N. 2009. Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. Singapore: Willey-Blackwell. Grawitz, M. 2004. Social Sciences Methods. Athens: Odysseas [in Greek]. 209

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Haddad, Y.-Y. ed. 2002. Muslims in the West: From Sojourners to Citizens. New York: Oxford University Press. Hatzipanagiotou, M. and Zarikos, I. 2017. Dominant Islamophobic Narratives-Greece. Working Paper 4, Counter Islamophobia Kit project. Retrieved from https://cik.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/ sites/36/2017/07/2017.07.25-WS1-Greece-Final-1-1.pdf (accessed 4 December 2017). Kallis, A. 2015. Islamophobia in Europe: the radical right and the mainstream. Insight Turkey, 17(4), 27–37. Kastoris, D. 1997. Orthodoxy or Barbarism? Athens: Parousia [in Greek]. Katsikas, S. 2012. The Muslim minority in Greek historiography. European History Quarterly, 42(3), 444–467. Khosrokhavar, F. 2009. Inside jihadism: Understanding jihadi movements worldwide. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Koronaiou, A., Lagos, E. and Sakellariou, A. 2015a. Singing for race and nation: fascism and racism in Greek youth music. In Simpson, P. A. and Druxes, H. eds. Digital Media Strategies of the Far Right in Europe and the United States. Lanham: Lexington 2015, pp. 193–213. Koronaiou, A., Lagos, E., Sakellariou, A., Chiotaki-Poulou, I. and Kymionis, St. 2015b. Golden Dawn, austerity and young people: The rise of fascist extremism among young people in contemporary Greek society. In: Pilkington, H. and Pollock, G. eds. Radical futures? Youth, politics and activism in contemporary Europe. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell 2015, pp. 231–249. Ktistakis, Y. 2006. The Sacred Law of Islam and the Greek Muslim Citizens. Athens-Thessaloniki: Sakkoulas [in Greek]. Kyriazi, N. 2001. Sociological research. Athens: Ellinika Grammata [in Greek]. Lipka, M. 2017. Muslims and Islam: Key findings in the US and around the World. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Retrieved from www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/22/muslims-and-islamkey-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/ (accessed 25 November 2017). Machaira, M. 2016. Lesvos is under attack; Lesvos is being Islamised; Lesvos is dying. Moli Machaira blog. Retrieved from http://malamamaxaira.blogspot.gr/2016/02/blog-post.html (accessed 20 November 2017) [in Greek]. Marzouki, N., McDonnell, D. and Roy, O. 2016. Saving the People: How Populists Hijack Religion. London: Hurst & Company. Mölder, H. 2011. The culture of fear in international politics: A Western dominated international system and its extremist challenges. In: Kilp, A. and Saumets, A. eds. Cultural, Peace and Conflict Studies Series, Volume II: Extremism Within and Around Us. Tartu: Tartu University Press 2011, pp. 241–263. Retrieved from www.ksk.edu.ee/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/KVUOA_Toimetised_14_11_holger_molder. pdf (accessed 20 November 2017). Morgan, G. and Poynting, S. (eds). 2012. Global Islamophobia: Muslims and Moral Panic in the West. Farnham: Ashgate. Nielsen, S. J. 2016. Muslims in Western Europe. 4th edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pratt, D. and Woodlock, R. (eds). 2016. Fear of Muslims? International Perspectives on Islamophobia. Cham: Springer. Public Issue. 2010. The Greeks and Islam: What Public Opinion Knows and Believes. Athens: Public Issue [in Greek]. Robin, C. 2004. Fear: The History of a Political Idea. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roy, O. 2006. Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. New York: Columbia University Press. Runnymede Trust. 1997. Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All. London: Runnymede Trust. Runnymede Trust. 2017. Islamophobia: Still a challenge for us all. London: Runnymede Trust. Said, E. 1981. Covering Islam. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Sakellariou, A. 2011. The invisible Islamic community of Athens and the question of the invisible Islamic mosque. Journal of Shi‘a Islamic Studies, 4(1), 71–89. Sakellariou, A. 2015a. Anti-Islamic public discourse in contemporary Greece: The reproduction of religious panic. In: Elbasani, A. and Roy, O. eds. The Revival of Islam in the Balkans: From Identity to Religiosity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2015, pp. 42–61. Sakellariou, A. 2015b. Golden Dawn and its appeal to the Greek youth. Athens: Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Retrieved from http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/athen/11501.pdf (accessed 3 October 2017). Sakellariou, A. 2016. Islamophobia in Greece: National Report. In: Bayrakli, E. and Hafez, F. eds. European Islamophobia Report. Istanbul: Foundation for Political Economic and Social Research (SETA) 2016, pp. 200–221.

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17 Religious dimension of Polish fears of Muslims and Islam Konrad Pędziwiatr

Introduction The 100th anniversary of Fatima revelations and 300th anniversary since the coronation of the highly venerated icon of Black Madonna of Czestochowa were celebrated in Poland on 7 October 2017, with a mass religious mobilisation event called “Rosary to the Borders”.1 This day marked also an anniversary of Christian victory over Ottoman Turks at the sea battle of Lepanto in 1571. The later anniversary was downplayed by some organisers of the event and stressed by others. The lay Catholics from the organisation Soli Deo Basta who put forward the idea of “Rosary to the Borders” encouraged Poles to go to designated points along the country’s borders for a mass rosary prayer and thus celebrate the double/triple2 anniversary.3 The liturgical commission of the Polish Episcopal Conference (the central organ of the Catholic Church in Poland) officially approved the programme of the event and encouraged the faithful to join the mass prayer, and mobilised parishes to help in the planning and to offer liturgies for the participants. Numerous state companies provided financial support to the organisation behind the event (Woźnicki 2017). Officially, according to the organisers, around a million of Poles prayed for the “salvation of Poland, Europe and the world”. However, before the event took place some of its organisers and prospective participants spoke about other goals of the prayer such as, inter alia, protection of Poland and Europe from the secularisation and Islamisation.4 From the beginning there was a lack of clarity about the goals of the mobilisation not only among the organisers and participants5 but also among the clergy. Although the spokesperson of the Episcopal Conference stressed that the event had purely religious character and it is “a manipulation” to claim otherwise (Paweł Rytel-Andrianik quoted Giangravè 2017), some of the statements of the members of the Conference contradicted these claims. One of them came, for example, from the Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski of Kraków, who said that the event at the nation’s borders is a message “to other European nations so that they understand that it’s necessary to return to Christian roots so that Europe may remain Europe . . . it represents the only way to save its culture” (Kantorski 2017). Numerous people accused the organisers and participants of contributing to the country’s growing malcontent towards various “others” (especially from the Middle East and Africa) and providing a symbolic backing to the current right wing government and its policy of opposing the EU relocation and resettlement scheme 212

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and maintaining the policy of closed doors to “Muslim refugees”. This type of voice one could hear not only from outside of the Church but also from within it. The former secretary of the Episcopal Conference, Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek told Italian newspaper Famiglia Cristiana: The rosary is a beautiful prayer, but the bishops did not foresee nor understand in time that it could be used as an ideological weapon by the government’s propaganda. . . . The Church not noticing this was at the very least a very serious naivety. (Bobbio 2017) The vagueness and contradictions in the statements about the goals of the Rosary to the Borders manifest well the wider ambiguity of the Polish Catholic Church and some of its most active lay members about their stand on “others” and in particular the most important religious “others”, that is, Muslims. The goal of this chapter is to shed light on some of the features of these ambiguities and religious dimensions of Polish fear of Muslims and Islam. It begins with brief introduction about the status of the Catholic Church in Poland and a few observations on intensification of processes of sacralisation of the nation and state in recent years. Then, it sheds light on Church official position on Muslims and Islam as to be found in the key church documents and as expressed by the church leadership. From the Church leadership and key documents it goes then to the assessment of the portrayal of Muslims and Islam in Church owned or affiliated weeklies and bimonthly.

Polish Catholic Church and sacralisation of the nation and state The importance of the Catholic Church in the country where around 90 per cent of people belong to the Catholic Church and half of them regularly participate in the services goes far beyond the religious sphere (Czapiński and Panek 2015; GUS 2015). The Church’s position in today’s Poland is not only anchored historically and culturally, but also legally, as it is the only religious institution that has relations with the state regulated by an international treaty or a Concordat. It stipulates independence and autonomy of the Church and State but, at the same time, gives the Church privileged status in many spheres (e.g. by guaranteeing the access to Catholic – services in all public institutions including education, health service, military and prison; see Wroczyński 1996). Through its teachings within the state educational system6 and outside of it, the Church plays an important role in regulating various matters traditionally linked with the private sphere and has a significant influence on the shape and content of public debates. At the same time, as the public opinion polls show these extra-religious roles played by the Church are accepted by the large part of the society. For instance, a study conducted by CBOS in 2013 showed that 80 per cent (or more) of Poles did not object to the participation of clergy in the ceremonies related to state holidays, accepted Catholic crosses in secular public buildings, religious lessons in public schools, and the religious nature of military oaths. Furthermore, almost three fourths did not see anything wrong in the participation of priests in the television programmes and 61 per cent gave the clergy right to speak publicly on spiritual and moral issues. The fact that the vast majority of Poles did want the clergy to tell for whom they should vote draws clearly the borders of the Church’s influence in the public sphere (CBOS 2013). In spite of these limits the social research shows the Church as an institution that has great impact on the public debates in Poland. They are concerned not only spiritual, moral and philosophical issues – but also legal, economic and political. One of the examples of the Church’s impact on shaping the content of the public debates in the country concerns the bill that forbids large-scale commerce on Sundays.7 Theoretically, this 213

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issue is an economic one and does not directly relate to religious life. Nonetheless, the clergy became one of the initiators of this discussion and has been actively lobbing for new regulations in this domain. The position of individual priests and bishops in this matter was significantly strengthened when the Polish Episcopal Conference officially stated that it supports the Sunday commerce ban (Mikulski 2017). The authors of the new legal regulations in this domain frequently refer to the church’s position and the social teachings of the Catholic Church as arguments in the political debate. Thus, they give primacy to arguments of a religious nature over those referring to economic nature or those linked with individuals’ economic freedom. While doing so they are well aware of the surveys that show that 60 per cent of Poles have positive attitude to the reforms banning large-scale commerce on Sunday (Roguska 2016). The Catholic Church is also one of the most trusted institutions in the country and the one that receives the highest social evaluation rates for its activism. Recent studies show that currently the Church’s activism is viewed positively by 52 per cent and negatively by 35 per cent of respondents. Although these ratings of the Church are quite stable (see graph 1 below) one may notice starting from 2015 temporary decline in the positive evaluations of the Church’s activism and growing number of those who sees this activism negatively (blue – positive, red – negative; CBOS 2017). One of the explanations for the declining positive social evaluations of the work of the Church in Poland may by related to its increasing politisation over the last two years and its strengthening alliance with the right wing government that came to power in 2015. The Polish Catholic Church is politically divided with its more open, centrist and pro-European elements frequently sympathising with the former ruling party centre-right Civic Platform (or Party Modern), and more conservative and critical towards European Union, liberals and all kinds of “others” part of it that tend to support right wing Law and Justice Party (hereafter PiS).8 When PiS came to power the later elements of the Polish Church were significantly strengthened. The new ruling party has repaid the Church for its silent support of wide range of reforms introduced under the slogan “good change” with, inter alia, aforementioned legislation banning large-scale commerce on Sunday, suspension of in vitro programmes, limiting access to medical contraception, eliminating sexual education from school curricula and giving the Church more space in the state-owned media cleansed from the journalists critical towards PiS. The Church has profited from this new political alliance as numerous of its ideas and suggestions were either relatively quickly implemented (e.g. Sunday commerce ban) or being prepared for implementation by the governing party (e.g. legislation restricting rights to abortion). At the same time, the Church’s more aggressive intrusion into various spheres of life in alliance with the Law and Justice Party is clearly viewed by growing number of Poles as the transgression of the limits of 70% 60% 50% 40%

Positive Negative

30% 20% 10% 0% 2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

Figure 17.1  Social evaluation of the Polish Catholic Church’s activism between 2011 and 2017. 214

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its socially acceptable influence. It has also raised some very critical voices from within the Catholic Church in Poland. In one of the most recent cases, a Dominican monk and one of the spiritual leaders of the Solidarity Movement, Father Ludwik Wiśniewski has controversially announced that “Christianity in Poland is slowly dying”. For him clear signs of the Church’s demise are above all “the death of the Christian spirit” in the numerous believers who belong to the Church, their refusal to welcome refugees, hostility towards the people with a different skin colour, linking Catholic faith with nationality and hatred towards the Poles with a different political convictions’ (Wiśniewski 2018). The new alliance between some elements of the Church and the government has also significantly intensified the processes of sacralisation of the nation and the state.9 As Buchowski (2016) rightly notes, in Poland, where one may observe crosses present in almost every school and in many other public spaces, where there are religious classes in public schools, numerous religious monuments, national heroes presented as religious martyrs, religiously motivated restrictive abortion laws, etc., there is a strong intertwining of Catholicism and nationalism. In these processes of mixing Catholicism and nationalism, Poland is constructed as a hybrid of the sacred and the profane. In a new political context (locally and globally), a profane nation/state is converted into a holy body of a nation/state that is endangered not only by cultural Others, but – above all – by religious Others. In this context, Islam and Muslims have been narrated as the most important enemy and key threat to the nation and the state. The figure of a refugee has been constructed as the one that is supposed to embody Muslims and Islam (Pędziwiatr and Legut 2016). Thus, the opposition to the EU-proposed relocation and resettlement has in Poland very important religious dimension. In particular, the politicians of the ruling party backed by their media outlets have been repeating like a mantra that the opposition to (Muslim) refugees from Middle East and Africa equals saying “no” to Islamisation of Europe, “change of its normative structures” (MSWiA 2017) and its unavoidable pernicious effects such as terrorist attacks. Some of the most notorious ones spreading these kind of views were the former Minister of Interior Affairs (under PM Szydło) and current Minister of Defence (under PM Morawiecki) Mariusz Błaszczak and Minister of Science and Higher Education Jarosław Gowin. As argued elsewhere, while 2015 saw significant rise in the public expression of anti-Muslim sentiments in Poland, 2016 and 2017 saw further banalisation of Islamophobia in the country and anti-Muslim views becoming even more mainstream not only in politics, but also in media, education and other spheres of life (for detailed information see Pędziwiatr 2016, 2017). These views found many sympathisers among the conservative anti-European parts of the Polish Catholic Church. In the most extreme version, the threat of Islamisation as imminent one was presented in 2015 and 2016 by a young charismatic Catholic priest, Jacek Międlar, who was suspended by his religious order (Zgromadzenie Księży Misjonarzy) for spreading openly antiSemitic and Islamophobic views and later (in September 2016) announced his departure from the order. He became a symbol of the marriage of most extreme elements of Polish Catholicism with the far-right movements (Wszechpolacy and ONR), especially after leading a Holy Mass and delivering a sermon in support of the far-right organisation ONR in Białystok Cathedral (Pędziwiatr 2017). During the nationalist rally on the Independence Day (11 November) in 2015, he famously addressed the gathering by saying: Dearly beloved, we’re not afraid of the peaceful Muslims, but they’re a minority. We’re afraid of fundamentalism. We do not want violence, we do not want aggression in the name of Allah . . . We must oppose it. We do not want the hatred that is in the Quran, but we want the love and truth of the Gospel . . . The Gospel, and not the Quran! The Gospel, and not the Quran! (Jacek Międlar, quoted in Haris 2016) 215

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One could observe the continuation of the processes of sacralisation of the nation/state in Poland during 2017 Independence Day rally. The organisers of the event, which was initially celebrated only by the far-right organisation (ONR and Wszechpolacy) and from 2011 started to attract increasingly diverse audiences (including some right wing Polish MPs) and growing number of participants (Malinowska, Winiewski and Górska 2016), marched in 2017 under the banner “We Want God”. One of the organisers explained that by doing so they wanted to “invoke the fighting church . . . portray Catholicism not as a faith of the weak but as faith of the strong people” (Zakrzewski 2017). At the same time around 60,000 participants of the march that carried inter alia banners saying “Europe Will be White or Uninhabited”, “No to Islam in Poland” or “White Europe of Brotherly Nations” (TVN 2017) was trying to further nationalise the country’s Catholicism and to associate it with xenophobic, if not outright racist and Islamophobic vision of the nation and state.

Official Catholic pronouncements on Muslims and Islam One of the key documents presenting the actual official Catholic stand on Islam and Muslims is the “Declaration of Nostra Aetate” adopted on 28 October 1965, during the Second Vatican Council. The document is in fact the church’s pronouncement on its relationship with nonChristian religions. The Declaration emphasises the common features of Christianity and Islam such as the belief in one God who is the omnipotent creator of heaven and earth, the recognition of Jesus (though not God) and Mary. Its general character is the great respect for Islam and its believers. The Second Vatican Council and Declaration Nostra Aetate by highlighting salvific validity of other faiths, including Islam, opened a new chapter in Christian-Muslim relations (Esposito 1992; Pratt 2010). The post-conciliar documents also have an important role in determining the attitude of the Catholic Church towards non-Christian religions. Some of the most important documents of that character are “The attitude of the Church towards the followers of other religions. Reflections and directions on dialogue and mission” and “Dialogue and preaching”. The first document issued by the Secretariat for Non-Christians assesses the progress in interreligious dialogue that has been made since the Second Vatican Council. It was published in 1984 and called for ecumenism encompassing not only different Christian communities but also other faith communities. According to this document the basis for interreligious dialogue should be linked at the theological foundations – for example, the belief that God through the incarnation of Jesus loved all men. It also recognises that in other non-Christian religions one can see the good and the truth and the elements that are common to the Christian faith (Fic 2010, p. 56). The second document, published in 1991 by the Pontifical Council for International Dialogue and the Congregation for Evangelization of Peoples, reiterates the post-conciliar ideas about other faiths including Islam confirming that the Roman Catholic Church is officially seeking dialogue with the Islamic culture. There is also respect for the fundamental values of the Muslim world (Fic 2010). The Church after the Second Vatican Council, in its official pronouncements, is generally more likely to emphasise the similarities that the followers of both religions may have, rather than differences. Yet one more of the post-Vatican documents that have an important role in determining the attitude of the Catholic Church towards non-Christian religions is the Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Asia, signed by John Paul II in November 1999. It talks about the necessity of interreligious dialogue with Islam. According to the document, dialogue between religions – especially monotheistic ones – “is the will and intention of God”. At the same time, the Church continues to view dialogue between religions as part of its evangelising mission (Sakowicz 2006). The official standpoint of the Polish Catholic Church on Islam 216

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and Muslims stays in line with the key pronouncements of the Second Vatican Council and Declaration Nostra Aetate and other relevant conciliar documents. In some ways it goes even beyond these pronouncements and answers directly the call of the late Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyła – Pope John Paul II for “a truly dialogical relationship where both sides give and both receive” and “dialogues of life and action” (Pratt 2010). One of the most important elements of it is the Day of Islam in the Polish Catholic Church for the first time celebrated in January 2001. This unique initiative, not only in European but also global context, consists of numerous interreligious events (e.g. conferences, seminars and interreligious services) held every year on 26 January in different parts of the country. It was proposed to the Bishops Conference and accepted in 2000 by the Common Council of Catholics and Muslims (Rada Wspólna Katolików i Muzułmanów), which was established in 1997 (Lewicka 2010).10 As far as the individual standpoints of the Polish bishops on Islam and Muslims are concerned, they are much more diverse. One may find among the leadership of the Catholic Church in Poland both strong supporters of interreligious dialogue with Muslims within the parameters set by the Vatican II who sometimes have very nuanced and in-depth knowledge of Islam and Muslim world, as well as sceptics and opponents of such a dialogue. The latter group usually perceives Muslims and in the context of migration crisis also refugees as a “threat” to Christian Europe. Among the first group one may find inter alia current archbishop of Łódź and former rector of Cracow religious seminary Grzegorz Ryś who has repeated many times that “one should not associate Islam with terrorism” and that “in line with the teaching of Jesus we should accept refugees” (Fakt 2016). Another one is bishop Krzysztof Zadarko, who frequently commenting on the migration crisis, emphasises that not all Muslims are a danger to Europe but only a small minority of them and that assistance to refugees should be provided not only abroad (main argument of the current government) but also in Poland (2017). Some of the members of the Church who see these issues from a different perspective are bishop Edward Frankowski who recently argued that “moderate Islam has run rampant in Europe. It threatens us with immigration, demography . . . Mosques and Quranic schools” (Fronda.pl 2015), or the aforementioned bishop Marek Jędraszawski who said that the politics of multiculturalism has failed in Western Europe and warned against opening the country to immigration (Kantorski 2017).11

Portrayal of Muslims and Islam in the Catholic press In order to better understand the impact of the Catholic Church on the perception of Muslims and Islam in a society made up by 90 per cent of Catholics, it is worth going beyond the official documents of the Church and statements of its leadership. One way of doing this is by analysing the narratives on Muslims and Islam that appear in the largest newspapers and journals published by the Church: weeklies Gość Niedzielny (Sunday Guest)12 and Niedziela (Sunday)13 or related to the Church – bimonthly Polonia Christiana.14 The weeklies with the circulation around 200,000 copies per week and the bimonthly with circa 30,000 copies sold six times per year extend significant influence on their buyers and their families. In addition, all the newspapers and journals influence their audiences through their websites. The most frequently consulted one is maintained by the bimonthly Polonia Christiana – the website pch24.pl registered almost two million visits in the last six months – followed by the website of the weekly Gość Niedzielny (gosc.pl) 1.9 million visits and the site of the weekly Niedziela (niedziela.pl) visited by 1.3 million times in the last six months.15 The body of the texts selected for detailed content and critical discourse analysis (Wodak and Meyer 2001) was made up of 217 articles that talked about Muslims and Islam, and were published in the aforementioned weeklies between 2010 and 2017 and in the bimonthly from 2008 to 2017.16 217

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One of the most popular contexts in which Muslims and Islam emerge in the analysed body of texts is the one of oppression and persecution of Christians worldwide. In these articles, Muslims are framed as the main oppressors of Christians. This topoi (or argumentation schemes/ headings as part of wider sets of discursive strategies; Krzyżanowski 2010) are present within the Catholic press more frequently after the proclamation of so-called Islamic State in June 2014 and its advances to Christian areas of Iraq and Syria and all kinds of violations of human rights (e.g. killing civilians, taking them hostage, forcing them to convert to Islam). In one of numerous articles of this type, the author of the article in the weekly Sunday argues that: Christians in Nigeria constantly face discrimination, they are falsely accused of blasphemy against Islam as a result of which Christian students and lecturers are forced to leave schools; there is lack of permissions to build churches and set up cemeteries; the ones that are considered illegal are demolished; the youth is often forced to convert to Islam, especially women; there is a discrimination of Christians in the state jobs market; Muslims who convert to Christianity are being sent death threats. (Cisło 2012) Although some authors explicitly say that not all Muslims are responsible for the persecution of Christians and that some followers of Islam even help persecuted Christians or solidarise with them (Łuczak 2014a), the general description of the situation of Christians in the Muslim countries is very grim. Some authors argue that the level of persecution of Christians in the Muslim countries (e.g. in Iraq) amounts to “Holocaust” (Jakimowicz 2014) and that soon they will become in certain parts of the world (Middle East) history (Dziedzina 2013). An important sub-topos of the aforementioned topoi is the oppression and persecution of all those Muslims who decide to embrace Christianity. The authors of numerous articles on these themes often argue that the West is blind to the problems of Christians in the Muslim countries and because of political correctness or for other reasons (e.g. economic – wanting to maintain good commercial relations with partners in the Middle East or elsewhere in the Muslim world) does not address their problems. The cases of Asia Bibi (Pakistan) or Meriam Ibrahim (Sudan) have been particularly widely explored in the Catholic press (Rędzioch 2014). Some authors argue that Muslims who converted to Christianity are even persecuted in Europe. One of them wrote that “We talk about persecution of Christians and Christophobia only with regards to Iraq, Egypt or North Africa but we are persecuted also in Europe, in the suburbs of Paris. Muslims embracing Jesus there face death” (Bątkiewicz-Brożek 2012). Another very popular way of framing Muslims that is linked with the aforementioned representation of followers of Islam as persecutors of Christians is to view them as radicals and fundamentalists and their religion as “the most intolerant religion on earth” (Szaniawski 2010). One of the common arguments being made in the analysed texts is that among the followers of Islam there is huge overrepresentation of terrorists (Łuczak 2014b) and that the slogan of “liberal Islam” is only a smokescreen for the expansionist nature of their religion. Doerre (2008) argues: Although Muslims claim that Islam is a religion of peace and that war against the “infidels” is being waged only by a fringe of extremists. The truth is that war and conquest of non-Muslim lands are part of the culture of Islam from the time of its birth. The crusades in this context are presented as the response to Muslim aggression, which supposedly aimed to halt the expansion of Islam on the European continent, freeing Christians from the repressions of Muslims and protection of the holy sites. 218

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Yet another narrative in which Muslims and Islam play key role is the whole stream of texts about the Islamisation of Europe. Numerous authors argue in these texts that as in the past (from the 8th century to the 17th century, with the battles of Poitiers 732 and Vienna 1683 invoked as the key historical moments) Islam is once again today trying to Islamise Europe. According to this narrative, the inflow of Muslims migrants to Europe constitutes a deadly “threat” to European values and cultures. One of the many articles of this type points out that “Bassam Tibi, Muslim scholar living in Germany, says that contemporary Muslim immigration to Europe is a third wave of Islamic expansion to the West. The first was the conquest of Al-Andalus, the second victories of Ottoman Empire and now is the third” (Dziedzina 2013). This topos was very strongly emphasised in the articles especially over the last two–three years while referring to the migration crisis. Many articles either explicitly – like the whole issue of Polonia Christiana from November– December 2015 (see the photo of its cover below) – or implicitly argued that Muslims migrants coming to Europe are a form of Caliphate’s (Daesh’s) “Fifth Column” or a form of terrorist in disguise. If they are not current terrorists then they are future ones – as symbolically depicted on the cover of the Polonia Christiana by a person holding a time-bomb in their hands. Apart from migration, the danger for Europe is seen above all in the current demographic patterns and in the visible consequences of them – in particular mosque building projects. One of the authors for instance is complaining that “Muslims did not respect even the French rules of laïcité. Islam started to slowly enter schools, public offices and streets. Muslims who were praying on the streets of France and blocking them now have their mosques” (Bątkiewicz-Brożek 2013).

Figure 17.2  Cover of the magazine Polonia Christiana from November–December 2015. 219

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Numerous articles similarly to the aforementioned one paint a picture of Europe in which the processes of secularisation lead not so much to increasingly liberated social spaces from the control of the sacred, but to the opening of new spaces for the religious expansion of Islam. Thus secularisation is viewed similarly negatively as the demographic growth of Muslim communities and emergence of Muslim institutions. One of the authors argues: Demographic problems are not the reasons but consequences of the crisis of deep cultural and moral roots linked with the loss of the Christian identity by the old continent. Contemporary Europe is attacked from one side by Islam and from the other by secularism. It becomes a place with increasing number of mosques and minarets and churches being transformed into discotheques and supermarkets. (Mattei 2008) In this context, Poland is often mentioned as the last “hope” for Europe. Its historic role of being the “bulwark of Christiandom” (in Latin - Anntemurale omniae Christianitatis) is very strongly revived. In this narrative, Poland is framed as a guardian of Christian Europe and protector from new “infidel” invasions. Many contributors to Catholic press envisage a new role for Poland as a re-Christianising force. This motive in Poland in the last years has been brought by several Polish politicians including Prime Minister – Mateusz Morawiecki (Gazeta Wyborcza 2017). According to several authors, Poland as a country spared from dynamic secularisation processes is obliged to defend Christianity and religious fundaments of Europe. One of them writes, for example, “Poland should remain faithful to her role of being the bulwark of Chrisitiandom. The history seems to point out that this role God has reserved for the Polish nation” (Doerre 2008). Partially linked to the last topos as well as to the one on Muslim converts and persecution of Christians, is the topos of fearing and saving Muslim women. On the one hand, they are framed as the main “threat” to Europe and on the other hand, as victims of oppression of Muslim men that require to be saved. As Narkowicz and Pędziwiatr (2017b) note, these two types of narratives frequently go hand in hand. One of the authors referring to this topos writes that “Fanatical Islamic imams preach in thousands of mosques that they will win the war with the infidels thanks to the oil and bellies of our women” (Szaniawski 2011). According to many contributors to the analysed weeklies and the bimonthly, Muslim women need to be saved from Muslim men while, at the same time, they have to be feared, because thanks to them, Islam expands silently in Europe and the world. The deployment of liberal feminist sentiments in anti-Muslim narratives in the analysed texts is inconsistent with social realities of Poland and especially with the Church’s conservative stand on the role of women in the society (Szwed 2015). In contrast to what one could expect from the analysis of the key documents of the Church after the Second Vatican Council on Muslims and Islam, the topos of interreligious dialogue does not feature frequently in the analysed body of texts. In each of the analysed titles it is possible to find articles on this issue (often related to the Day of Islam in the Polish Catholic Church or information about Papal visit to one the Muslim countries – e.g. Rozpiątkowski 2014), however, they make up only a small percentage (around 10 per cent in the sample of texts) of all the articles that mention Muslims and Islam.

Conclusions Research has showed that Poles are characterised by some of the highest rates of fear of Islam and its followers in Europe (Pędziwiatr 2017; Narkowicz and Pędziwiatr 2017a; Zick, Küpper and Hövermann 2011). These fears have developed largely in the absence of any interactions 220

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with Muslims or visits to the Muslim world (CBOS 2015) and on the basis of earlier types of xenophobia (inter alia anti-Semitism, anti-Roma and homophobic attitudes) not properly being addressed in the earlier decades, that constitute powerful templates for contemporary patterns of “othering” (Bilewicz and Krzeminski 2010; Gołębiowska 2009; Tycner 2017). The analysed data show that the Polish Church is doing very little to dispel misconceptions about Muslims (as well as refugees and immigrants). The official pronouncements of the Catholic Church and its leadership on Muslims and Islam are quite distant from the portrayal of them in the Church or Church-related press. The most popular socio-cultural representations of Muslims and Islam in the analysed titles are strengthening the stereotypical images of Islam and its followers rather than challenging them. The popular images of Muslims as “other” and a serious threat to “Christian way of life” and “our social and cultural norms and values”, as well as, if not current, then “prospective terrorists” are strengthened by the analysed media. The Polish Church is thus very poorly living up to the spirit of the Declaration Nostra Aetate and instead of mitigating the growing fear of “others”, conceived above all as Muslim others, it is frequently exacerbating these fears. The fears of Islam and its followers to which numerous articles in the analysed press contribute are very skilfully filtered over the last years in the nationalist narratives through the historically-constructed notion of Poland as a bulwark of Christiandom. The Polish Church and its priests are seen in this vision as being destined to play a key role in the “battle” with enemies of Western Christianity, and Muslims in particular. Documents such as the “Christian Dimension of Patriotism” published in April 2017 by the Bishops’ Conference that try to prevent the politicisation of Catholicism by these types of mobilisations and the revival of narrowly-understood national pride (Konferencja Episkopatu Polski 2017) have been little known to the larger public and are a rare attempts by the Church leadership to prevent such instrumentalisations in a period of high securitisation and politicisation Islam. Similarly, the initiative of the Day of Islam in the Polish Catholic Church is targeting only a small section of the clergy and faithful (mostly those already involved in inter-religious dialogue) that is not able to deconstruct the hegemonic visions of Muslim “others” supported by large sections of the Church and its media platforms.17

Notes 1 More information about the event can be found on its official website at http://rozaniecdogranic.pl. 2 Officially the event marked double anniversary (the revelations of Fatima and the coronation of Black Madonna), however, numerous organisers and participants mentioned also the third anniversary related to the 16th-century Lepanto sea battle. 3 Yet other anniversaries mentioned by the organisers were the approaching anniversary of the century since Poland regained independence in 1918, and the 140th anniversary of revelations of Mary of Gietrzwałd. 4 In several instances one of the main organisers of the event Maciej Bodasiński mentioned not only general religious goals but also such aims of the event as protection of Poland and Europe from “Islamisation and linked to the terrorist attacks, armed conflict in Europe and departure of the West from the Christian roots” (Polsat 2017). 5 For example one of the participants interviewed by the BBC said that by participating in the event she was expressing thanks for the survival of her son in a car crash, but also praying for the survival of Christianity in Europe:“Islam wants to destroy Europe . . . They want to turn us away from Christianity” (BBC 2017). 6 Religious education was re-introduced to state schools in 1990. 7 New regulations in this domain started to be implemented from March 2018. 8 More information about the conservative part of the Church that is often associated with the social movement formed around the Radio Station Mary see Pędziwiatr (2015). 221

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9 It is important to stress that this process has a very long history (see, for example, Janion 2006; Łuczewski 2012). 10 More information about the Council can be found on its website at www.radawspolna.pl. 11 This section of the text draws from the article published by the author in 2018 (Pędziwiatr 2018). 12 One of the oldest Catholic newspapers in Poland.The first issues were published in 1923. It is published the Publishing House of the Metropolitan Curia in Katowice. It has nationwide circulation and avarage circulation is 204,000 copies per week (Rygiel 2013). 13 Niedziela is second oldest and largest Catholic weekly in Poland. It is published since 1926 by the Publishing House of the Metropolitan Curia in Częstochowa with varied circulation between 175,000 and 200,000 copies per week (information from www.niedziela.pl/dzial/37 and Rygiel 2013: 173). 14 Polonia Christiana is a bimonthly published from March 2008 by the Association of Christian Culture of Father Piotr Skarga in Krakow. It aims to “Wake Poles’ Conscience”. It cooperates with the Italian monthly “Radici Cristiane”. It publishes around 30,000 copies (information from www.pch24.pl/pismo,redakcja). 15 Data obtained through the market intelligence tool provided by Similiarweb.com. 16 In the case of the bi-monthly Polonia Christiana the issues from 2008 onwards were taken into account in order to have a sample of texts that would match these from the weeklies. 17 Acknowledgment: This work was supported by Östersjöstiftelsen (grant number Dnr 45/13).

References Bątkiewicz-Brożek, J. 2012. Co roku 6 mln wyznawców islamu prosi o chrzest. Gość Niedzielny 46. Bątkiewicz-Brożek, J. 2013. Wyznawcy Republiki. Gość Niedzielny 38. BBC. 2017. Poland holds controversial prayer day. BBC News, October 7. Retrieved from www.bbc. com/news/world-europe-41538260. Bilewicz, M., and Krzeminski, I. 2010. Anti-semitism in Poland and Ukraine: the belief in Jewish control as a mechanism of scapegoating. IJCV, 4(2), 234–243. Bobbio, A. 2017. La Chiesa polacca su una strada pericolosa, sostiene il Governo e dimentica il Papa. Retrieved from www.famigliacristiana.it/articolo/la-chiesa-polacca-su-una-strada-pericolosa-parlamons-pieronek.aspx. Buchowski, M. 2016. Making anthropology matter in the heyday of Islamophobia and the “refugee crisis”: the case of Poland. Český Lid, 103, 51–67. CBOS. 2013. Religia i kościół w przestrzeni publicznej (No. BS/170/2013). Warsaw: Centrum Badania Opinii Społecznej. CBOS. 2015. Postawy wobec islamu i muzułmanów (Attitudes towards Islam and Muslims). Warsaw: Centrum Badania Opinii Społecznej. CBOS. 2017. Ocena instytucji publicznych (No. 32/2017). Warsaw: Centrum Badania Opinii Społecznej. Cisło, W. 2012. Nigeryjska powtórka Sudanu? Niedziela no. 4. Czapiński, J. and Panek, T. 2015. Diagnoza społeczna 2015. Warsaw: Rada Monitoringu Społecznego. Doerre, P. 2008. Cień półksiężyca. Polonia Christiana 1. Doerre, P. 2008. Przedmurze chrześcijaństwa. Polonia Christiana 2. Dziedzina, J. 2013. Eksterminacja chrześcijańskiego Wschodu. Gość Niedzielny 36. Esposito, J. 1992. The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fakt. 2016. January 28. Polski biskup broni islamu. Retrieved from www.fakt.pl/wydarzenia/polska/ biskup-z-krakowa-w-obronie-islamu/s1q6f61 (accessed 2 January 2018). Fic, L. 2010. Dialog międzyreligijny. Pedagogia Christiana, 2(26), 56. Fronda.pl. 2015. Mocne słowa bp. Frankowskiego. Retrieved from www.fronda.pl/a/mocne-slowabp-frankowskiego-radykalni-islamisci-zwieraja-szyki-przypuszczaja-wzmozony-atak-na-chrze scijan,56922.html (accessed 2 January 2018). Gazeta Wyborcza. 2017. Mateusz Morawiecki ma ambitny cel. “Chcemy rechrystianizować Europę. To moje marzenie.” Retrieved from http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/wiadomosci/7,114884,22758869,mate usz-morawiecki-ma-ambitny-cel-chcemy-rechrystianizowac.html (accessed 2 January 2018). Giangravè, C. 2017. Catholic “Rosary to the Border” event highlights immigration concerns in Poland. Retrieved from https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2017/10/12/catholic-rosary-border-event-highlightsimmigration-concerns-poland/ (accessed 2 January 2018). Gołębiowska, E. 2009. Ethnic and religious tolerance in Poland. East European Politics and Societies, 23(3), 371–391. 222

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Szaniawski, J. 2011. Islam przeciw cywilizacji zachodu. Niedziela 7. Szwed, A. 2015. Ta Druga. Obraz kobiety w nauczaniu Kościoła Rzymskokatolickiego iw świadomości księży. Kraków: Nomos. TVN. 2017. Rasistowskie hasła na marszu niepodległości. Retrieved from www.tvn24.pl/wiadomosci-zkraju,3/banery-na-marszu-narodowcow,790105.html (accessed 2 January 2018). Tycner, M. 2017. Wolna od Żydów, katolicka, militarna męska. Krytyka Polityczna. Retrieved from http:// krytykapolityczna.pl/kraj/wolna-od-zydow-katolicka-militarna-meska-to-faszystowski-ideal-ktoryspelnia-sie-w-polsce (accessed 2 January 2018). Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. 2001. Methods of critical discourse analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Woźnicki, Ł. 2017. Państwowe spółki mecenasami “otoczenia Polski różańcem”. Ile przekazały na “Różaniec do granic”? Retrieved from http://wyborcza.pl/7,75398,22474030,panstwowe-spolkimecenasami-otoczenia-polski-rozancem-ile.html (accessed 2 January 2018). Wroczyński, K. 1996. Konkordat. Gorzów Wielkopolski: Oficyna Wydawnicza Elita-Lex. Zadarko, K. 2017. Bp Zadarko: nie uciekniemy od odpowiedzi na pytanie, jak pomóc migrantom. Retrieved from http://niedziela.pl/artykul/31636 (accessed 2 January 2018). Zakrzewski, R. 2017. Jak PiS z Kościołem żyje. Retrieved from http://wyborcza.pl/7,75968,22553381,jakpis-z-kosciolem-zyje.html (accessed 2 January 2018). Zick, A., Küpper, B. and Hövermann, A. 2011. Intolerance, Prejudice and Discrimination: A European Report. Berlin: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

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18 Islamophobia and the quest for European identity in Poland Katarzyna Górak-Sosnowska and Marta Pachocka1

Introduction For over a decade Poland has been one of the biggest euro-enthusiasts, after having joined the EU in 2004. However, after 13 years something has changed dramatically. According to one of the recent opinion polls provided by the Institute for Market and Social Research (IBRIS), over a half of Polish population (56.5%) declared that Poland should refuse to accept refugees from Islamic countries, even if it meant a cut (or even loss) of EU funding. Moreover, every second Pole (51.2%) would still insist on not accepting any refugees from Islamic countries, even if that meant leaving the EU (IBRIS 2017). Similar attitudes are also reflected in the research of the Public Opinion Research Center (CBOS) from December 2017, which indicates that hypothetical punishment in the form of losing money from EU funds by Poland does not significantly affect opinions on admission of Muslim refugees under the EU relocation programme: 74% of respondents (4 percentage points more than in May 2017) believe that Poland should not accept refugees from Islamic countries, and only 15% (a decrease of 10 percentage points) take the opposite position (CBOS 2017, p. 4). Hence, a couple of thousands of Muslim asylum seekers – as Poland has never agreed to accept more – in a country of 38 million became a significant reason to opt for a Polexit. The narratives around the refugee crisis – its causes, scale and consequences – very soon started to have a life of their own. As the flow of people from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe was on the rise, the crisis became political, with the EU member states trying to agree on a joint response. The crisis was also used in internal political games by the countries, which were not affected by this influx of migrants (e.g. Pachocka 2016, 2017). In Poland, since 2008, when the EU started to collect comparative statistics on international migration and asylum from its member states, the number of asylum seekers was the highest in 2013 (more than 15,000) and not in 2015–2016, the peak years of the refugee crisis, but it was still marginal when compared to key EU receiving countries. There were just more than 8,500 asylum applicants in 2008, and more than 12,000 in 2015–2016 (Eurostat 2017). Even the national composition of asylum applicants indicates that Poland differs from the countries that are in the focus of the European refugee crisis, as most applicants come from Russia (Chechnya Republic), Ukraine, Tajikistan and Armenia (Office for Foreigners 2016; Klaus et al. 2018; Szulecka et al. 2018). Combining all these factors – a history of euro-enthusiasm, strong anti-Muslim sentiments and 225

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lack of any significant Muslim population (neither autochthonous nor refugee or immigrant) – paints a puzzling picture, even poses a paradox. Out of a variety of possible explanations, this chapter focuses on just one, but a crucial dimension, i.e. the European context. It argues that Polish Islamophobic discourse is strongly linked to the way the idea of the Polish national identity is managed vis-à-vis the European one. To set the scene, two final remarks need to be made. The first one is about the wider internal political context and the other about the authors’ stance. Disturbing changes have been taking place in Poland since the late 2015, when it started to isolate itself from the EU and shifted its position from the ‘decision-making centre’ of Europe to a rebellious periphery. Nowadays, more than 25 years after the fall of communism, Poland, until recently considered an Eastern European systematic transformation success story, seems to be at the crossroads. The 2015 general elections gave power to the populist Law and Justice party (Polish: ‘Prawo i Sprawiedliwość’, PiS), which immediately embarked on an ambitious project to completely transform Poland’s foreign and domestic policy (Misiuna and Pachocka 2017). While PiS scored the majority in the parliament and won the presidential elections, Polish society is far from unified. On the contrary, it is becoming more and more divided in terms of its beliefs and political preferences. The divisions observed are no longer a simple expression of diversity and pluralism in the society, but they lead to open political conflicts and discussion about the foundations of democracy. This has been more and more apparent in Poland in recent months and it reached its peak in July 2017 when national mass demonstrations, protests, marches and rallies were held in many cities to express the opposition of Poles to the planned reform of the national judiciary considered antidemocratic and undermining the separation of powers. On the one hand, we observe the development of anti-democratic tendencies and populism in Poland combined with the crisis of democracy and the rule of law. On the other hand, it serves to revive bottom-up pro-democratic tendencies in the country and mobilize civil society. This is the wider context in which any Islam- or refugee-related narrative (as they both overlap in public discourse) should be positioned in. While it is hard to say whether Islamophobia or other negative sentiments related to ethnic or religious Others had always been present in the Polish society, but latent, or maybe they are new, and grew out of contemporary political climate, two things can be taken for granted: one is that Islamophobia is a part of a wider mainstream Polish quest for strengthening its national identity (understood in narrow terms as ethnic Polish and Catholic) in opposition to all others who do not fit; the other is that current Polish authorities not only do not even try to tamper anti-Muslim sentiments but actually fuel them within their own political agenda. This refers not only to indulgence in some of the hate crimes against Muslims or people perceived to be Muslim, but most of all in the pronounced reluctance to accept any refugees from outside the EU or other EU members (occasionally there was an alternative narrative of willingness to accept Christian refugees from MENA region, but hardly materialized into any concrete action). The other introductory remark is on our position in this issue. While we are both academics, we are also Polish and had been experiencing and living this rapid and dramatic political shift taking place in our country. Only in late December 2017, the EU has initiated the Article 7(1) procedure against Poland, which is labelled as the ‘nuclear option’,2 as the judiciary power’s independence is at a serious risk, and thus the principle of the separation of powers. Consequently, our chapter is enriched by our insights from – let us call it – ongoing participatory observation. We will start by an overview of Polish ‘platonic’ Islamophobia3 rooted in a discourse transplanted from the so called ‘old’ EU countries as the ideological backbone for the current narratives. Then we will move to the image of the EU in the Polish society, pointing at what is pulling the Poles towards the EU. Having these two building blocks – perception 226

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of Muslims and of the EU – we will proceed to the dominant narratives, which combine the Islamic and/or the refugee element with the European one, showing how they evolved – from longing to be a part of the EU to rebelling against its policies and core values. Finally, we will present the case of asylum seekers that Poland was actively opposing to accept as an example of a selective EU membership and a practical consequence of local Polish Islamophobia.

Transplanted discourse and the Muslim Other Poland is a country where Tatars (Muslim autochthonous minority) have been living side by side with other Poles for over 600 years and have always been loyal to the Polish state, fighting for their Polish homeland when it was needed. While Tatars were outnumbered by migrants from Islamic countries, the total number of Muslims in Poland is nowadays estimated at fewer than 0.1% of the whole population (i.e. 35,000–40,000), and according to official statistics even fewer than that (Górak-Sosnowska 2016). Many of these migrants had come to Poland in the socialist era, learnt the language, got higher education and integrated, or even assimilated, into the mainstream society. There had never been any significant concerns of migrants of Muslim background being unemployed, relying on social care, or living in ghettos, not to mention being a terrorist threat (in fact the very few threats that Poland has experienced in the last years were caused by native non-Muslim Poles). Poland is one of the few EU countries completely unaffected by the refugee crisis. Unlike Hungary there was not even a mass migratory wave passing through Poland, nor any significant number of people who would apply for an international protection (e.g. Pachocka 2016). Yet, despite all these facts, Islam and Muslims provoke strong and unfavourable feelings as shown by Polish public opinion polls – both in absolute terms, as well as in comparison with the old EU member states. That is why some papers on Polish Islamophobia are entitled ‘Islamophobia without Muslims’ (e.g. Bobako 2014; Górak-Sosnowska 2016) and try to explain this paradox in a reasonable manner. While the numbers and the structure of local Muslim population speak against any fear they could possibly cause, one has to remember, that Poles overestimate the actual number of Muslims in their country and perceive Islamization of Poland as a real threat. According to a 2016 Ipsos study (public opinion polling group), the perceived percentage of Muslims in Poland is 7%. While there have been other European nations which overestimated the actual proportion of Muslims in their home countries more than the Poles in percentage points (in case of the highest – France – the estimation is 31% comparing to the reality of 7.5%, i.e. 24 percentage points difference), Polish estimation is 70 times higher than the real number (while the French just 3.2 times higher). Moreover, according to the Polish public, in four years the number of Muslims in the society is going to reach 13% of the population (Ipsos 2016). This would mean an influx of around 5 million Muslims, turning Poland into an EU country with one of the most numerous Muslim communities. In contrast, Poland ranks below the world average in the Ipsos index of ignorance, which indicates that in other spheres Poles were able to quite accurately guess the facts and data about their country (ibid.). Perception is clearly far from reality in the case of Islam and Muslims in Europe, but there are two other points that should be made in regard to the above results. The first one is that due to the marginal number of ‘own’ Muslims, Polish society has to actually invent some and does it by reproducing negative stereotypes about them from elsewhere (Pędziwiatr 2017). Until the last couple of years this ‘elsewhere’ were Muslim majority countries, mostly from the Middle East, or some abstract, exotic ‘Arabia’. However, later the point of reference became the EU, and thus the discourse became ‘transplanted’ from the old EU member states to Poland (GórakSosnowska 2011). A brief look at the country of activity of many Polish anti-Islam speakers and 227

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activists clearly indicates that they either live in the old EU states, or maintain strong links to local anti-Islamic scene (e.g. Rose 2017). The second point resulting from the Ipsos survey is that Poles seem to be particularly ignorant (to use the wording from the index) when it comes to their Muslim population. Maybe that is why they are able to believe, without much hesitation, the most bizarre information, provided it is about the Muslims. One of such examples is a Facebook post about an Arab who drives a black Volga car (in a more extreme modified version: a black camel) and kidnaps women on the streets of a Polish city, which was shared by more than 14,000 people and provoked real discussions about this possible danger (Śmigulec 2017).

Now that we’ve joined the EU – what’s next? For Poland, the European Communities and then the European Union constituted the main point of reference for the major part of the post-1989 period, and the accession to the EU was the key political ambition and the national priority. It is well illustrated by the results of the national referendum on the EU accession held on 7–8 June 2003, approximately one year prior to the EU enlargement in 2004. In 2003, 77.45% of voters were in favour of Poland’s membership in the EU and a national turnout of 58.85% was considered to be very high for Polish standards (PKW 2003). Today, Poles are still quite enthusiastic about the EU. According to the results of the Eurobarometer in autumn 2017, for 84% of Poles the EU conjured a positive image, and for 9% – a negative one. Polish people identified two key most positive results of the EU, i.e. the standard of living of EU citizens (36%) and the free movement of people, goods and services within its territory (31%). The top EU value of respecting democracy, human rights and the rule of law was ranked on fifth place among Polish public (EC 2017, p. 14). Moreover, when asked what a society should emphasise in order to face major global challenges, Poles opted for progress and innovation unlike the vast majority of other EU citizens, who chose social equality and solidarity (ibid., p. 125). The Eurobarometer results clearly indicate that while Poles are still happy about belonging to the EU, they tend to cherish its economic backbone rather than the core European values and assets (such as social equality and solidarity, or the EU’s respect for democracy, human rights and the rule of law, which on average ranked higher in the poll). Membership in the EU means predominantly the possibility to receive EU (co-)funding in different ways (e.g. through national budget or involvement in EU projects) and enjoy the benefits of the European Single Market and visa-less travels within the EU. When it comes to the cultural and normative foundations of the EU, many Poles are reluctant to perceive it as something positive, or as a strength of the EU (EC 2017). Moreover, while still the vast majority of Poles agree that their country should remain one of EU members, it should be stressed that this consensus does not carry any significant meaning anymore (Balcer et al. 2016). In 2016 Polish respondents were asked how they would have voted in the event of a hypothetical referendum on the Polish exit from the EU. The results showed that 77% of respondents were in favour of Poland’s presence in the EU. However surprisingly the idea of Polexit was more approved among young people: 27% of those aged 18–29 years would have voted for leaving the EU (Pacewicz 2016). Why is the idea of European integration less endorsed by the generation that in fact has only known Poland as a member of the EU? The change of opinion of the Poles vis-à-vis the EU can result above all from their disappointment with the ineffectiveness of the EU in relation to many external and internal challenges, including the migrant and refugee crisis, Brexit or terrorist threats (Misiuna and Pachocka 2017). The Law and Justice Party, in power since late 2015, has taken advantage of this situation and seems to present a vision of the EU as an organism subject to the disintegration, at least in its present character. 228

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There is a strong emphasis put on the sovereignty and subjectivity of the Polish nation and strengthening Poland’s position both in the EU and in the international arena. Consequently, the conditions of Poland’s membership in the EU as a sovereign state are clearly underlined. In addition, in the statements of government representatives and supporters of the ruling party, comments about the disintegration of Europe as a result of the migration crisis and ineffective EU actions in response to it have been made in recent years. In general, PIS represents a critical approach to the ‘Western model’ implemented in Poland after 1989, and Europesimism as to the future of the European project in its current form. Poland also expresses resistance to deepening integration (Balcer et al. 2016).

Polish Islamophobia: from (be)longing to rebellion Three years ago, before the refugee crisis and the rise of the PiS party, Polish philosopher Monika Bobako (2014) formulated a thesis that Polish Muslim-less Islamophobia should be understood as a way of belonging in Europe. After the collapse of the USSR, Poland was able to shift to the West, and joined the EU in 2004. Poland and many other so-called new EU member states joined a club of much more economically and socially developed countries and this opportunity was the capstone of a long-term political and cultural strategy that has been reasonably and deliberately fulfilled by Polish government backed by almost universal popular agreement. In this new political order, it managed, however to occupy only a (semi-) peripheral position. As Bobako (2014) suggests, Islamophobic discourses applied in Poland can be interpreted as confirming Polish membership in (Western) Europe, as a community of values, but also of high economic standards. In other words, Poles ‘borrow’ Islamophobic discourses from the ‘old’ EU member states, and use them despite not having own challenges related to local Muslim population, in order to feel included in what is going on in the European core. Thus, not by coincidence, Polish Islamophobic discourse is focusing on what is going on in the old member states, rather than e.g. in wider Central and Easter Europe. It serves as a tool to create and negotiate Poland’s European identity through participating in what is going on in the West. The same approach was noticed by one of the authors (Górak-Sosnowska 2013) in a study on narratives around building a mosque in Warsaw. With respect to mosque opponents, the most dominant one was of a ‘conscious European’, who perceived building a mosque in Poland as a further step of Islamization of Europe. The ‘conscious European’ claimed to be pragmatic and willing to protect his country from what he has personally seen or knew about Muslim communities in Europe. Not by coincidence, he often recalled examples from Germany, France or the UK rather than e.g. the Czech Republic or Romania. This way he could link Poland to the biggest players in the EU. On the one hand, those who supported building the mosque often revoked feelings of shame, that Poland positions itself at the outskirts of Europe by being xenophobic and limiting freedom of belief. Again, in this case, Poland was linked to what is going in the ‘old’ EU member states (where mosques are generally allowed and built). Interestingly, the supporters of the mosque viewed Poland as the periphery of the EU, and believed that it could improve its position by adjusting to the liberal democratic values. On the other hand, the opponents of the mosque revoked the historical idea of Poland as the bulwark of Europe and perceived the problem of Islamization as a pan-European one. In both cases, Polish Islamophobic discourse was strongly linked to the way in which the idea of Polish national identity was managed vis-à-vis the European one. It seems that the refugee crisis and the rise of PiS party have recently changed this discourse, or rather re-shifted it. Previously, Islamophobic discourse was used as a way of belonging into 229

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the European symbolic universe of problems and challenges. Currently, it seems to serve as a means of semi-peripheral rebellion against the EU core. Islamophobia became a significant tool in compensation and defensive strategies implemented by the current political elite. It is worth stressing that the enlargement process put a greater stress on economic development and convergence within the EU at the expense of political development and shared European values. European peripheries got a set of rules and indicators to follow in order to catch up (or rather, to some extent, be levelled up) with the core. One of the results is paradoxically the emergence of semi-authoritarian regimes located at the peripheries of the democratic EU community (Kelemen 2017). Mobilizing people around Islamophobia is just one of the examples of defence and compensation strategies which serve political elites as means of strengthening Polish national identity, but at the same time indicate the troublesome and complicated attitude of Poland towards the EU. While Poland would like to join the core, it still wants to stay away as an ethnic and religious autarky. Lacking economic capital – comparing to the ‘old’ EU member states – Polish political leaders evoke and implement other types of capital, namely cultural and political. As indicated by Bobako (2017), Islamophobia fits them perfectly. On the political level, opposing refugee quotas and refusing to share the responsibility with other EU states in the refugee crisis proves that Poland regains its own independence and sovereignty – i.e. Poland wins. Culturally, strengthening Polish tradition, and religious values not only can ‘spare’ Poland from Islam, but also cure the rest of the continent – i.e. Poland wins again. The last part of this component can actually be referred to as ‘East European messianism’ – belief that Poland has a special role to play in Europe due to its unique history, tradition and morality. A significant part of its role is rescuing Europe from Islamization, which is understood as a part of a bigger project of sparing it from moral decay (Bobako 2017).

Managing paradoxes Both types of capital used are of symbolic nature, and thus can be easily manipulated for the sake of the political agenda, despite possible paradoxes that they bear. In order to successfully manage them, a wide range of reinterpretative tools are used. On the political level Poland accuses EU of neo-colonial approach (i.e. imposing its will on weaker members), but at the same time benefits from EU funding. The logic behind this paradox can be presented by combining two quotations from PiS politicians: in an interview, Elżbieta Witek, the PiS spokesperson stated: ‘We shall not let the European dictate to be imposed on us . . . It wasn’t us who colonialized these areas . . . We cannot be politically correct and accept everything only because the Germans want it’ (Polskie Radio 2015). At the same time, the selective EU membership is justified – this time by the chairman of PiS, Jarosław Kaczyński: ‘The fact that some people spend some very small amounts comparing to their national income and we benefit from it, doesn’t mean that we so cheaply ought to renounce our most fundamental rights’ (Rzeczpospolita 2016). In other words, Poland can proudly benefit from EU funding, and at the same time (also proudly) refuse any responsibility in the refugee crisis. Some politicians took this narrative even further by stating that Poland should actually demand war repatriations from Germany (Gazeta Wyborcza 2017). This strategy proved to be quite tricky, as specifically Germany is accused of forcing Poland to accept refugees. By claiming that it is actually Poland, who should receive funding from Germany, Poland becomes a victim (and not so the refugees). Interestingly, while Polish competitive victimhood-based identity has so far been used mostly as acknowledgement of past suffering (Vollhardt et al. 2015), it seems now to be used as a justification for not helping others. 230

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Another paradox that needs to be resolved is proving that EU is weak while Poland is strong and safe from Islamist-motivated terrorist attacks. The latter is actually quite easy to prove, since Poland is located at EU peripheries, and since terrorist attacks are meant to reach a wide audience, conducting one in Poland is simply less worth it, when compared to West European countries. Taking into account the migration flows, Poland is also unattractive for Muslim migrants or refugees due to its lower economic development, weak migrant networks and political climate. There are also ways to prove that it is actually the EU that is weak. One of the examples is a recent statement of the Interior Minister of Poland, Mariusz Błaszczak, after the terror attack in France: ‘What conclusions were drawn after the terrorist attacks in Paris? Marches were organised, flowers were painted on the sidewalks in different colours, with crayons of the colours of the whole rainbow. For me it is a clear link to LGBT’ (Gazeta.pl 2016). France was presented here as helpless and irrational, not knowing how to deal properly with Islamist extremism and terrorist. Of special interest should be the link to LGBT, which might make no sense at first glance, but it actually fits well into the narrative of moral decay in the EU (with LGBT being, next to the refugees, another piece of evidence for it) juxtaposed against Polish neotraditional Catholicism and morality. Finally, a paradox on religious dimension, namely, how to combine Polish strong religious identity (as indicated in many Islamophobic narratives) with the essence of Catholicism – i.e. giving a helping hand to those in need, carrying and loving your brothers and sisters, and showing compassion. A December 2017 opinion poll published just before Christmas showed that 65% of Poles would not welcome any refugee at their Christmas Eve party, despite the tradition of keeping one empty seat for an unexpected guest in need (Wirtualna Polska 2017). While this aspect of Polish selective religiosity has not been researched yet, it should be noted that there are Catholic priests who publicly justify their lack of willingness to accept any refugees by e.g. degradation of Jesus in Qur’an, hatred towards Christians in Islamic countries, security issues and political correctness, pointing at Biblical virtue of vigilance and prudence (Fronda 2015). Another priest who called for accepting refugees was deemed as Pharisees, who leads them to temptation and let devil in (Woźnicki 2016). With the Polish Catholic scene (both clergy as well as believers) being also divided, it is clear that religious arguments can be used both in favour and against accepting refugees. This selective religiosity is well-reflected in the results of opinion polls combing the Polish attitude to accepting refugees with socio-demographic profile of respondents. As we learn from CBOS research (2017) the general characteristics of people who are in favour of accepting refugees from countries affected by armed conflicts (in general) are Poles with higher education, aged 35–44 years, living in cities (especially the biggest ones), with monthly per capita income of at least PLN 1,400, declaring left political inclinations and not participating in religious practices. In addition, more often than average, disapproval for admission of refugees specifically from the Middle East and Africa who have arrived to some EU countries, concerns younger and the least educated people from rural areas, with low or average per capita income, declaring rightist political views and most involved in religious practices.

Practical consequence: the case of the refugees Poland seems to treat the EU instrumentally and selectively to achieve its own national goals and defend its interests, while forgetting that membership in the EU is not only a right but also a duty. An example here is the refusal to implement relocation and resettlement mechanisms that were proposed by the European Commission in May 2015 within the framework of its ‘European Agenda on Migration’ (EC 2015) as part of the EU level response to the migrant and refugee crisis (Pachocka 2016, 2017). These two emergency actions involved the adoption 231

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of a distribution key of asylum seekers from Italy and Greece (relocation) and from third counties (resettlement) among EU Member States. A more controversial scheme that aroused the most emotions among EU countries – the relocation – was launched in accordance with Art. 78 (3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU), which deals with the EU asylum policy.4 It is also important to note that Art. 80 of TFEU stresses that the EU policies in the field of migration, asylum and border management and their implementation ‘shall be governed by the principle of solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility, including its financial implications, between the Member States. Whenever necessary, the Union acts adopted pursuant to this Chapter shall contain appropriate measures to give effect to this principle.’ In this light, it is also worth recalling other treaty provisions that relate to the general conditions and principles of the EU membership, not only with regard to migration, asylum and borders. Of a special importance is Art. 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) stressing the EU values.5 Moreover, Art. 4(3) of TEU clearly underlines how the EU members should act in relation to their EU membership and EU law.6 Bearing in mind the above perspective, it is worth emphasizing that the relocation was not an unlawful act of the EU interference in the sovereignty of its member states or a non-binding invitation to cooperate based on a soft, unwritten principle of solidarity, but it was an urgent and immediate solution established for two years until September 2017 having legal roots in the treaty provisions. It was a duty, not a right. Poland’s negative attitude to receiving refugees under the relocation and resettlement schemes was related to a certain extent – even if not directly – to the social conviction (of course only by some) that they would be Muslim migrants, who may not want to integrate with the host society, who could pose a threat to the security of the country and import terrorism. This was strengthened by – sporadic but still occurring – statements by PIS politicians – that Poland could only accept Christian refugees (e.g. PCh24.pl 2016). In this way, the anti-refugee discourse overlapped with anti-Muslim and anti-European ones. There were even voices saying that the EU wants to force Poland to accept ‘Islamists’ threatening the country with financial penalties. It should be remembered that these are extreme views and they cannot be attributed to the whole society, but nevertheless taking place. Nowadays anti-migration, anti-refugee narrative is mixed with anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-European discourse. We are dealing with a great simplification regarding the links between the increasing immigration to Europe and the threat of its Islamization, as well as limiting the decision-making sovereignty of Poland by the EU and its institutions in the context of implementation of the relocation scheme or a reform of the judiciary. In this context, the unfavourable attitude towards Muslims seems to be part of a larger puzzle, related to Poland’s struggle for self-identification and redefinition of both – its identity and position on the European scene. Unfortunately, this important process takes place at a difficult time for the EU, which is affected by different crises and challenges and for Poland, which is ruled by the right-wing Law and Justice party (e.g. Misiuna and Pachocka 2017). In the years 2015–2016, the approach of Poland to relocation and resettlement was mostly in line with the broader stance taken by the Visegrad Group composed of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The V4 countries were critical towards the above-mentioned schemes and they objected to the compulsory migrant quotas. The V4 stand towards the relocation and resettlement pulled the V4 countries together in 2015–2016, however not enough to contribute to the development of deeper cooperation within the V4 in other areas or to favour the institutionalization of the Group as an independent body. The close cooperation of the four Visegrad countries was rather fragmentary and ad hoc. However, this example showed that it is possible that the V4 countries could re-attempt to take a common position on issues concerning the future of the EU and European integration to strengthen their bargaining position and make them a loud voice among EU member states (Pachocka 2016). 232

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It is interesting that Visegrad States are not major immigrant-receiving EU countries, not in absolute numbers and not as a percentage of the total migration to the EU. In addition, Poland is a regular net emigration state with more emigrants than immigrants each year. The migration and refugee crises affected significantly only one of the four V4 countries since 2015 – Hungary – and only because of its location on the Western Balkan migration route leading from the Mediterranean Sea deeper into Europe. Therefore, with limited migration experience after World War II, the Visegrad states were acting in the analysed period as if they intend to ‘escape forward’ from what is unknown (Pachocka 2016). In fact, nowadays, there are two Visegrad countries that could be considered today’s enfants terribles of the EU – Poland and Hungary due to many reasons, including i.e. their ‘no’ to the solidarity of the EU Member States in terms of implementation of the relocation and resettlement schemes as the response to the migrant and refugee crisis and their internal political situation, characterized by anti-democratic tendencies, growing xenophobia, racism and Euroscepticism (e.g. Klaus 2017). In this context, the current political line officially implemented by the Polish government and the ruling party since the late 2015, leads to a situation in which Poland’s role in the EU could be marginalized in the coming years and in which Poland could have less real and symbolic influence on the future of European integration. It matters for several reasons for Poland and the future of the EU. Just to evoke two of them: Poland was a good example of a successful multidimensional transformation of the political and socio-economic system in the early 1990s in Europe which could be followed by other countries; it is the largest and the strongest country in Central and Eastern Europe since 1990s in terms of area, population and economy. Unfortunately, today Poland’s example and role are questionable. The worst-case future scenario would be Poland’s exit from the EU (Polexit).

Conclusion Over the past 25 years, Polish foreign policy has been guided by the desire to participate in the life of the EU and its policy. It was recognized that only such behaviour could guarantee a sustainable socio-economic development and grant it political stability. Unfortunately, this has not been the case in the last few years, especially since late 2015 onwards. Poland has made a choice and has moved away from its position as the European ‘decision-making centre’, which is also linked to the primacy of national affairs over European ones (e.g. Misiuna and Pachocka 2017). Nevertheless, it does not mean that this new orientation of Polish foreign and domestic policy enjoys general support. The rise of Polish Islamophobia is a clear proof of this political shift. While Poles occasionally used Islamophobia as a mean of participating in the EU challenges, now under PiS Islamophobia became a powerful tool to oppose EU’s political and cultural foundations. Due to the marginal number of Muslims in Poland, the physical dimension of Polish Islamophobia is maybe not so visible in absolute numbers, since the number of Muslims or foreigners is still negligible. It is yet clear on the EU scene, where Poland, accompanied by some of the V4 countries, argues against refugee quotas, what has become a significant ideological component of wider fight for the ‘right place’ in Europe. Finally, it should be noted that Islamophobic narratives start to become less popular and might even be losing their momentum. This is, however, not backed by any change in attitudes towards Islam or Muslims, but rather in changing priorities. During the last few months of 2017, the Polish political scene was dominated by the argument around the judiciary system and possible sanctions from the EU. These were the topics that have been occupying the public, and the hearts and minds of the opposition. Comparing to the issue of refugees 233

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or Muslims, both of these challenges are much more immediate and visible. However, the Muslim Other (or even ‘Alien’ as it is often dehumanized) is still close at hand, ready to be reactivated in the battle against Europe.

Notes 1 Marta Pachocka’s contribution to this chapter is partially based on her research results from the project EUMIGRO – “Jean Monnet Module on the European Union and the Contemporary International Migration – an Interdisciplinary Approach” (project number: 575228-EPP-1-2016-1-PL-EPPJMOMODULE; agreement/decision number: 2016-2187) carried out at the Collegium of Socio-Economics of the SGH Warsaw School of Economics and co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. 2 Article 7(1) of the Treaty on European Union stipulates: “On a reasoned proposal by one third of the Member States, by the European Parliament or by the European Commission, the Council, acting by a majority of four fifths of its members after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament, may determine that there is a clear risk of a serious breach by a Member State of the values referred to in Article 2. Before making such a determination, the Council shall hear the Member State in question and may address recommendations to it, acting in accordance with the same procedure. The Council shall regularly verify that the grounds on which such a determination was made continue to apply.’ 3 A term one of us used over a decade ago to describe Polish negative attitude towards almost non-existent Muslims – i.e. a negative feeling towards something that is not even there (see Górak-Sosnowska 2006). 4 ‘In the event of one or more Member States being confronted by an emergency situation characterised by a sudden inflow of nationals of third countries, the Council, on a proposal from the Commission, may adopt provisional measures for the benefit of the Member State(s) concerned. It shall act after consulting the European Parliament.’ 5 ‘The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities.These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.’ 6 ‘Pursuant to the principle of sincere cooperation, the Union and the Member States shall, in full mutual respect, assist each other in carrying out tasks which flow from the Treaties.The Member States shall take any appropriate measure, general or particular, to ensure fulfilment of the obligations arising out of the Treaties or resulting from the acts of the institutions of the Union. The Member States shall facilitate the achievement of the Union’s tasks and refrain from any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the Union’s objectives.’

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Part III

Patterns of Islamophobia through a global lens

19 Islamophobia and the US ideological infrastructure of white supremacy Louise Cainkar

Introduction Islamophobia is increasingly treated as a form of racism in scholarship on its ideological and structural patterns in the West. Scholars argue that a range of markers of Islam, such as clothing, beards, and names, act as signifiers that bring on negative treatment in the same way that phenotype and skin colour do in traditional white supremacist racism (Rana 2011; Selod and Garner 2015; Selod and Embrick 2013; Bayoumi 2015; Cainkar and Selod 2018). Islamophobia similarly works within the same ideological infrastructure as white supremacy, constructing and deploying “us and them” binaries, applying different standards of accountability to each group, endorsing essentialized notions of innate superiority and inferiority, and marshaling degrading representations to make these distinctions appear as common sense. Islamophobia is far from a new phenomenon; rather, it stretches back to the “two 1492s” when Muslims and Jews were expelled from Iberia and Columbus “discovered” the Americas, transporting dominant antiMuslim views across the Atlantic with him (Shohat 2012). Ideas promoted in the US today, such as that Muslims are barbaric and uncivilized, can be traced to these Old World and New World encounters. Views of Islam and Muslims as threats to Christendom stretch back even further. According to Orientalist scholar Bernard Lewis (1993, p. 13): For almost a thousand years, from the first Moorish landing in Spain to the second Turkish siege of Vienna, Europe was under constant threat from Islam. In the early centuries it was a double threat – not only of invasion and conquest, but also of conversion and assimilation. Despite this historical backdrop, it is common for scholars to state, incorrectly, that Islamophobia burst onto the scene in the US after the 9/11 attacks. What these scholars are actually observing is the heightened awareness, whether their own or that of others, brought on by the outbreak of attacks on persons presumed to be Muslim after 9/11. In fact, only the presence of pre-existing anti-Arab and Islamophobic sentiments explains why US Arabs and Muslims en masse were held responsible for the actions of nineteen brownbodies persons on 9/11 (Cainkar and Selod 2018; Cainkar 2009). The main 9/11 effect on Islamophobia was to intensify it, unleashing a wave of violence against persons understood to 239

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be Muslim, and to institutionalize it within government policies. Asserting the 9/11 start date for Islamophobia also ignores, for example, the 20th century experiences of Black American Muslims, represented by leaders such as Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X, who challenged white supremacy. The mainstream US press vigorously condemned heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali after his conversion to Islam and reporters refused to call him by his Muslim name, referring to him instead as Cassius Clay, which Ali considered his slave name.1 Similarly, Black Muslim activist Malcolm X lived under intensive FBI surveillance prior to his assassination.

US Islamophobia rising Hate crimes perpetrated against Muslims and persons perceived to be Muslim occurred both before and after 9/11, yet it is important to recognize that the US American socio-political context has changed for Muslims, and worsened, over the past fifteen years. We should not treat “post-9/11” as a singular era because doing so conceals a number of deeper social changes that have occurred. If we look closely at the five or so years that followed the 9/11 attacks, we find an initial period of intensified hate crimes across the nation framed within a much longer period characterized by a wide range of government policies targeting Arab and Muslim men. My post9/11 policy analysis and qualitative study of Arab Muslim experiences in metropolitan Chicago found that area-wide acts of hate surged and then diminished after about six months, after which they became concentrated in white neighbourhoods with significant Arab Muslim populations, and mainly focused on women in hijab (Cainkar 2009). Policing Muslims exhibited a gendered pattern, in which the government’s focus was on policing Arab and Muslim men as “potential terrorists”, while public harassment, largely perpetrated by white women, was focused on gender-policing Muslim women in hijab. Yet, there is substantial evidence that the activities of an initially small but well-financed domestic Islamophobia movement have proven more harmful to US Muslims than the popular anger of the immediate post-9/11 period (Ali et al. 2011). This movement, the generator of state-level anti-Sharia campaigns, argues that Muslims are engaged in a “civilization jihad” to take over the United States and that Muslims can never be loyal US citizens (Bail 2012). The “post-9/11” narrative is also problematic because it attributes to the actions of Muslims every harm that Muslims have experienced since that time, therein taking on the shape, often unintentionally, of a blame the victim story. The domestic Islamophobia movement began gaining wide social traction during the 2007–2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama. During the 2008 election cycle, it actively demonized presidential candidate Obama as a closet Muslim and sent the anti-Islam film Obsession to voters in swing districts, inserting its dvd in locally prominent newspapers.2 During the 2010 election cycle it mobilized nationwide anti-Sharia campaigns and “Ground Zero mosque” protests, placed Stop Islamization of America ads on busses, and endorsed Florida preacher Terry Jones’ threat to burn the Qur’an on camera; all of these activities were given extensive coverage in the mainstream media (Feffer 2012). The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the University of California, Berkeley (2016) reported that between 2008 and 2013, “more than $200m was spent towards promoting fear and hatred of Muslims in the United States”. These efforts to increase Islamophobic sentiments and actions in the United States are what has to have produced increases in anti-Muslim views, not terrorism. A study by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding found spikes in anti-Muslim sentiments in 2008 and 2012, as measured by Pew research public opinion polls, demonstrating their relationship to election campaigns. Dalia Moghahed (2013) concluded that “anti-Muslim sentiment is almost entirely independent of the events of international conflicts, or even terrorist acts on U.S. soil, and much more tightly linked to election cycles and building domestic consent”. Similarly, 240

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a 2012 report in Mother Jones documented a “sharp uptick in anti-Islamic sentiment” during the 2010 midterm elections (Feffer 2012). The 2015–2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump leveraged the popularity of Islamophobia and ramped it up to a higher level; candidate Trump repeatedly bashed Muslims, among other subordinate groups, called Syrian refugees “Trojan horses”, and promised to ban Muslims from the US and register those already inside the country (Cainkar 2017). Once elected, President Trump continued to market fear of Muslims as a matter of national self-interest, as evidenced in the language of his executive orders (below). The negative impact of Trump’s campaign and presidency is demonstrable: the number of anti-Muslim hate groups rose from five in 2010 to thirty-four in 2015, 101 in 2016, and 114 in 2017 according to the hate monitor Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).3 Hate crimes against all groups increased by seven per cent in 2015, but by sixty-seven per cent for Muslims (Ansari 2016). A Pew Research Center analysis of FBI hate crimes statistics found that physical assaults against US Muslims reached immediate post-9/11 levels in 2015 and exceeded them in 2016 (Kishi 2016). The SPLC also reported thirty anti-Muslim incidents occurring in the five days following Trump’s election. Research conducted by California State University-San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism (Levin 2017) demonstrated that antiMuslim political rhetoric, in particular that of Donald Trump, played a major role in fueling these hate crimes, not the 9/11 attacks.4 These changes in the US socio-political climate altered the character of anti-Muslim hate crimes from the first years after 9/11, when women in hijab were the primary targets and white women the main perpetrators (Cainkar 2009, 2018a). Compared to that period, recent hate crime data reveal increases in attacks on Muslim institutions, an increase in male victims, and an increase in attacks on Muslim women by men, including murders. Thirty-five mosques were attacked or threatened across the US in the first three months of 2017, according to the SPLC. Also in 2017, a number of brown-bodied men, mistakenly assumed to be Muslim, were assaulted and murdered (see below). In sum, the Islamophobia movement, its adoption and expansion by the Trump campaign and presidency, and its institutionalization by the Trump Administration, has rendered US American society significantly more dangerous for Muslims than it has been since the days of slavery (see e.g. Diouf 2013). While these changes have little to do with the 9/11 attacks, Muslim haters often cite the attacks to justify their hostile behaviour.

Islamophobia gains traction through ideological tactics: epistemologies, binaries, essentialization and conflation Prior to providing an inventory of recent hate crimes and executive orders, which form some of the structural components of anti-Muslim racism in the US, it is important to understand why, on the ideological level, Islamophobic ideas are capable of gaining so much traction in the US. Anti-Muslim sentiments are not only part of American history, they are also embedded in modern day epistemologies and normative discourses that allow them to seem like common sense. At their foundation, these epistemologies and discourses are built on the construction of a superior “us”, and an inferior outcast world of “them”, a framing that historically underpinned colonialism and white supremacy and that was also integral to gaining popular support in the US for Japanese internment. The US educational system, its textbooks, and curricula, generate these epistemologies of superiority by teaching US children, starting in elementary school, that US history and culture is (1) uniquely of Western origin, and (2) superior to the histories and cultures of non-Western others. These ideas are taught in history, literature, and the sciences. They are communicated via western civilization curricula that begin with ancient Greece and the Roman Empire and then omit more the than 1000 years of intervening human history 241

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between those times and the European Enlightenment. The very long period between the 5th and 15th centuries is taught as the Dark Ages, a time of deterioration when no human progress occurred. In doing so, these curricula bypass all of the major medical, mathematical, scientific, literary, astronomical, and engineering inventions passed on to western civilization from scholars working in Muslim majority places. These advances in human knowledge, which could only be produced within cultures that valued reason and humanistic exploration, as well as the translation and preservation of earlier knowledge, are what made the European Enlightenment possible. While we are all actually intertwined in human history, our global interconnectedness is erased, by intent, from the history of Western civilization, therein promoting the notion of Christian religious superiority and white European cultural superiority. Europe’s distinctive scientific development and deployment of human racial hierarchies is similarly downplayed for these reasons. Islamophobia also gains traction due to the ways in which Muslim majority countries are portrayed in the US American media, utilizing a non-complex good country/bad country binary. The Muslim majority world, and the ancestral homelands of most Arab and Muslim Americans, is comprised of more than 80 countries that vary widely on languages, cultures, and levels of economic development. Yet these places are usually characterized in the US media as monolithically all the same, and as violent and uncivilized places characterized by teeming mobs full of hatred. After extensive study, literary scholar Edward Said (1981, p. xv) said about these media representations: In no really significant way is there a direct correspondence between the “Islam” in common Western usage and the enormously varied life that goes on within the world of Islam, with its more than 1 billion people, its millions of square miles of territory principally in Africa and Asia, its dozens of societies, states, histories, geographies, and cultures. And yet, in a country that claims to value knowledge, Said (1997) found upon updating his book seventeen years later that despite all of the events that had occurred in the intervening period, American news coverage of the Muslim majority world had become even less complex and more simplistic.5 The good country/bad country binary and the emotions produced by its representations promote dehumanization and prevent us from standing in the shoes of the other (Alsultaney 2012). It absolves “us” of feeling “their” fear when they are subjected to bombs and drones, and from feeling sorrow or even anger when their men, women, and children die. It’s a distortion of reality that encourages public support for the US government doing anything anywhere under the pretext that all are the same, allowing one Muslim majority country to be substituted for another. The good country/bad country binary enabled mass public support for the US invasion of Iraq as punishment for the 9/11 attacks, even though Iraq and Iraqis had nothing to do with them, and produced little remorse for the loss of tens of thousands of innocent lives that ensued. As it always casts “them” as malevolent and “us” as the innocent victims of their evil, we are never compelled to think of Muslims as fully human: as families, children, people who work, love, and feel sorrow, the substance of everyday human life across the world. These negative representations not only provide bedrock for Islamophobia, they deeply affect young Arab and Muslim Americans. In a 2011 study I conducted of transnational Arab and Muslim American youth, I found that the overwhelming majority of the ninety-three youth I interviewed had highly negative perceptions of their parents’ homelands before visiting them. I interviewed them when they were living in Jordan, Palestine, or Yemen and I asked how what they found differed from what they had expected. Nearly all of them said they had expected 242

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to find ignorant, backwards people, living in tents, and streets teeming with terrorists. For example, Nadim, who was born in Jerusalem and spent only 5 years in the US, told me: In those five years that I lived over there, I forgot everything about here. So when coming back I thought I’d come back to a desert. From what I heard, like suicide bombers everywhere, and war going on everywhere, that’s pretty much what I imagined. But when I came back I saw it was peaceful and it was a lot better and people weren’t so . . . well I thought they were gonna be ignorant, and it turned out pretty good. Findings like this reveal that misinformation tactics not only forge civic compliance with government actions and contribute to Islamophobia, they also perpetrate subjective violence on young children. Essentialization is another discursive tactic that, like the good country/ bad country binary, replaces complex variation with vast overgeneralization. Essentialization prepares us to consume ideas such as “Muslims hate us” or “Muslims hate our freedom” without question. Donald Trump was essentialzing when he said on 7 December 2015, “There is a great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim Population” and on 9 March 2016, “I think Islam hates us . . . There’s a tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it. There is an unbelievable hatred of us” (Cainkar 2017). Essentializing erases history and human complexity and replaces these with notions of an innate human character or an imagined unvarying culture. When a fundamental essence is the genesis of all events, there can be no externally produced cause and effect. Although this line of thinking negates scientific knowledge and rational thought – which the West claims are the foundation of its superiority – it is nonetheless endemic to US American culture. In its reliance on biological or cultural determinism, essentialization is a cornerstone of racism. Essentialization purports that African Americans are predominantly concentrated in impoverished ghettoes because of their own culture and innate characteristics, rendering the facts of forced migration, centuries of slavery, the racial caste system of Jim Crow, mass incarceration, and ongoing systematic discrimination as irrelevant to African American life. Essentialization is evident in Donald Trump’s 2017 statement that the US does not need immigrants from “shithole countries”, inferring that inferior cultures are responsible for current conditions, not global capitalism nor legacies of colonialism and imperialism. In the case of Islamophobia, essentializing proposes that over the course of more than 1400 years of history, nothing has really changed in the Muslim world. As anthropologist Mamdani (2002, p. 767) observes, “When I read of Islam in the paper today . . . [T]heir culture seems to have no history, no politics, and no debates. It seems just to have petrified into a lifeless custom.” Under such alleged conditions, books written 1600 years ago or 200 years ago can be used to explain human behaviour today. And so it was considered perfectly legitimate by US military trainers to use the 1963 book, The Arab Mind, which cites findings from an 1820 study in rural Egypt to explain modern Arabs, in the training US soldiers heading to Iraq in 2003. Similarly, quotes from the Qur’an are used to explain Muslim behaviour today, while the facts of military invasions, wars, occupation, settler colonialism, mass killings, drones, and torture are considered absolutely irrelevant. Mamdani (2002, p. 767) notes, “terrorism is a modern construction. Even when it tries to harness one or another aspect of tradition and culture, it puts this at the service of a modern project.” Thus, claims that ISIS was born of the Qur’an and represents the inherent traits of all Muslims, in which case all Muslims can be called ISIS, hide the historic fact that ISIS emerged from the real history of the US devastation of Iraq and the internal destabilization of Syria. Essentializations work in tandem with negative media representations to produce support 243

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for the notion that all Muslims are violent; they provoke hate crimes and the bullying of Muslim American children, as research shows. Conflation is another strategic tactic that merges identities, situations, or places sharing a few characteristics into a single conceptual construction, intentionally obscuring any differences between them. Conflation was used to garner public support for a shutdown of the Syrian refugee programme in the US, as when 31 governors banned Syrian refugees from their states, and as evidenced by President Trump’s Executive Order “Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Entry into the United States”.6 Conflation was used in two ways to sell the Syrian refugee ban: (1) by conflating Syrian refugees with European born followers of ISIS, and (2) by conflating asylees with refugees. When large numbers of Syrians arrived in Europe in 2015, escaping the fear and hopelessness of their conditions, they were discursively transformed into a “problem” for the West. Instead of innocent civilians escaping war, choosing life, and seeking freedom, they were (once again) portrayed as threatening people who don’t share our values. The monolithic and essentialzing character of Islamophobia played out in November 2015 when, in the midst of this mass movement of asylees, deadly bombings were perpetrated in Paris by persons presumed to have coordinated with ISIS, but who were not Syrian refugees. Syrian refugees were openly called terrorists, potential terrorists, and harborers and supporters of terrorists in sectors of the US press and were immediately, and falsely, blamed for these vicious attacks. In fact, most of the perpetrators were European raised citizens of France and Belgium. While it is true that two of them had snuck in with the masses of Syrian refugees using tampered Syrian passports, they were not Syrians, nor Syrian refugees. These facts were known to the authorities within days, but were considered irrelevant to those in the US who took this as an opportunity to call for banning Syrian refugees. Syrians and Syrian refugees were easily conflated with European born followers of ISIS simply because they both have brown skin and are (mainly) Muslim. Technically and de facto, the Syrians who fled en masse to Europe were not refugees but asylees seeking permanent resettlement. Asylees apply for permanent resettlement after, not before, entering a country, while for refugees the opposite is the case. As compared to sudden, mass, high risk, and unmonitored flows of asylum seekers, refugee policy works quite differently. In the US refugee programme, refugees must first be interviewed and registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), usually in a country bordering their homeland. Later, those selected for resettlement are interviewed multiple times and vetted. The US vetting process is complex and takes up to two years to complete, involving the US State Department, Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Terrorist Screening Center, and the National Counterterrorism Center, as well as extensive paper applications, in-person interviews, and biometric and medical screening tests. Despite this highly significant and very real difference between Syrian asylees in Europe and Syrian refugees being considered for settlement in the US, and the fact that Syrian refugees, and indeed Syrians, have not been charged with any acts of terrorism, Syrian refugees were summarily lumped into one undifferentiated and threatening group and called “Trojan horses” by then presidential candidate Donald Trump (September 2016).7 In January 2017, President Trump signed an Executive Order halting the US refugee programme under this pretext (see below). Finally, Islamophobia’s capacity to gain traction in the US derives from the persistent use of double standards. Consider the allegation that Islam is inherently violent; we can test this hypothesis by looking at geographic areas in the US with large concentrations of Muslims. If the hypothesis is true, these areas should show high rates of violence. In fact, however, statistics do not back up this claim. Indeed, quite the opposite is the case: rates of white on Muslim violence are the high ones. We can also examine this assertion historically. We find extensive violence 244

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conducted in the name of spreading Christianity, including mass murder, land confiscation, and removal of indigenous peoples, followed by forced migration and the implementation of slavery to drive the colonial economy. While many people now acknowledge that these atrocities conducted in the name of white Christian progress took place, they do not conclude that Christianity is an inherently violent religion. Rather, they say these reprehensible acts represent a horrible misuse of religion. Herein we find the application of different standards for Christians and for Muslims; in the case of Muslims, the religion is called fundamentally flawed; in the case of Christians, the religion is fundamentally good, but was misused by humans. A comparison of holy books also fails to meet the test; the biblical Old Testament contains plenty of violence and is used by many today to justify violence in the US and abroad. In sum, no religious orientation has a monopoly on violence and there are no data to support the all-encompassing stereotype that Muslims are terrorists or the reductionist view that Islam is an inherently violent religion. Nonetheless, these epistemologies and tactics working synergistically with each other, and are given voice and power by the nation’s leadership, providing fertile ground for the growth of anti-Muslim hatred.

Hate crimes against women in hijab I noted above that women in hijab were the most common hate crime targets in the years following the 9/11 attacks. I argue elsewhere (Cainkar 2018b), after an examination of the perpetrators and contexts, that these activities should be interpreted not only as Islamophobic, but also as acts of gender policing; they are attacks on violators of hegemonic masculinity/femininity. Unfortunately, information provided in more recent hate crime reporting lacks the rich detail of qualitative research data, including the demographic and social contexts in which these attacks are occurring. Without such information, these acts appear simply as anti-Muslim hate crimes, bearing no relationship to gender; notably, some have not been designated as hate crimes by the police. I itemize below a sample of some of the more recent hate crimes perpetrated against Muslim women reported in the news or documented by the hate monitor Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Typical reporting narratives argue that Muslim women are assaulted because they are more visible than Muslim men, discounting that gender has meaning in these acts, an interpretation I challenge. We know that in US American society bodies are raced and that brown male bodies assumed to be associated with Islam are hypervisible, and we have evidence of this latter fact from a wide range of actions, such as extra security checks at airports, removals from airplanes, and the more recent murders of brown-skinned men presumed to be Muslim. We must leave for further research an understanding of precisely how and why women in hijab are being attacked and especially the gendered social meaning that is attached to them. In March 2015, Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, her sister, Razan Abu-Salha, 19, both of whom wore hijab, and Deah Barakat, 23, Yusor’s husband, were murdered execution-style in their apartment near the University of North Carolina. Their white male neighbour was charged with the murder, in what police continue to call a “parking dispute” case. There is evidence that the murderer was obsessed with parking. However, hate crimes expert Jack McDevitt says about the case: “With hate crimes, it’s not always an either/or . . . In this case, he’s angry about the way people around him live, but he’s chosen these specific people because they also represent a religion he’s intolerant of” (Talbot 2015). In October of the same year, Asma Jama, a Somali woman wearing hijab, was smashed in the face with a beer mug at a Coon Rapids, Minnesota Applebee’s restaurant by a white woman who told her to speak English. The cut required seventeen facial stitches. Asma, a fluent bilingual speaker, was valorized in some media as “a Muslim woman who forgave her assailant during sentencing”.8 245

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In August 2016, two Muslim-American women in hijab were physically assaulted and harassed in a Chicago neighbourhood. Suzanne Damra reported that a (white) woman followed her and her mother as they walked to their car just after daybreak, spitting at them and shouting anti-Muslim slurs. Captured on cellphone video, the assailant tried to open the car’s locked doors and then broke the car’s side view mirror. The female assailant can be heard shouting at the women sitting terrified in the car: “You’re ISIS bitches”. Damra said it was at least the fifth time she and her mother had been accosted by the same woman (Rogers 2016). They blamed the political climate created by Donald Trump for the attack. The following month, 60-year-old hijab-wearing Nazma Khanam was stabbed to death in Queens, NY, as she was walking home carrying groceries. Yonatan Galvez-Marin (a Colombian immigrant) was arrested four days later and charged with the murder. This attack occurred less than a month after a Queens imam and his assistant were gunned down as they walked home from their mosque.”9 Also in September, a 36-year-old woman from Scotland in hijab had her blouse set on fire outside a Manhattan Fifth Avenue boutique (Morlin 2016). In addition, two Muslim women pushing their babies in strollers in Brooklyn were punched in the face by a (white) woman attacker who also attempted to pull their hijabs off. The attacker hurled Islamophobic insults such as: “Get the fuck out of America, bastards”. The perpetrator was charged with a misdemeanor hate crime (ibid.). During the first week after the 2016 presidential election won by Donald Trump, a Muslim woman in hijab was shouted at and spit on while riding on Portland’s red line. A group of teenagers went to her seat, called her a terrorist, told her she can’t wear hijab anymore, and that Donald Trump was going to deport her (Hatewatch 2016). Also after the election, Gwinnett County high school teacher Mairah Teli was left a note written by a child signed “America”, telling her that “her Muslim headscarf ‘isn’t allowed anymore.’ ‘Why don’t you tie it around your neck & hang yourself with it . . .’, Teli said she felt the note was in reaction to Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential race.” In both of these cases the gender and race of the perpetrator is unspecified. Moving into 2017, in late May, again in Portland, two (white) men were murdered and another seriously injured for coming to the aid of Muslim women in hijab who were being harassed on a Portland train by a white supremacist (Wang 2017). The next week, a video shot in the Chicago suburbs shows a white man at a Mexican restaurant hurling insults and obscenities at a group of teenage women in hijab, with his dining partner sitting idly by. In the video, the man called the girls “mother fucking camel jockeys” and told them, “you can go and beat it. If you don’t like this country, leave.” According to news reports, one of the girls said to the man: “It’s our home too. What do you mean leave?” A follow up meeting with Muslim youth at CAIR-Chicago produced “heartbreaking stories . . . from being yelled at by passing cars, to fear of standing too close to the train platform and getting pushed onto an oncoming train, to harassment by customers at work” (Selvam 2017; CBS Chicago 2017). Later in June, Nabra Hassanen, a 17-year-old Muslim girl in hijab from Northern Virginia was kidnapped and murdered while walking to the mosque. A Salvadoran immigrant was arrested for the crime. Local law enforcement officials called the motive “road rage” (Cauterucci 2017; Suerth 2017).

Hate crimes expand to include male victims The domestic Islamophobia movement and its endorsement by sectors of US leadership have fostered a broader animosity towards Muslims and more violent forms of attack than that which characterized the post-9/11 years. In recent years we have witnessed more male victims, more murders, and increased White supremacist involvement in anti-Muslim activities. In August 246

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2016, Imam Maulama Akonjee and his associate, Tharam Uddin, were shot at close range in the head while walking home after prayers in Queens, NY. Brooklyn resident Omar Morel was convicted of the murders. In Tulsa, mid-August, Khalid Jabara was shot and murdered at point blank range at his home by his neighbour, a (white) man who had been terrorizing Jabara’s Lebanese American family since he moved next door to them in 2011. The killer had been leaving menacing letters on their property as well as threatening voicemails and emails, using language such as, “dirty Arabs”, “Aye-rabs” and “Mooslems.” “Fuck you Arabs, Fuck you bastards.” “I want to kill you all.” Just a year before he murdered her son, the perpetrator hit Khalid’s mother Haifa Jabara with his car, nearly killing the 65-year-old woman. He had confessed to the crime and was charged with assault and battery with a deadly weapon, among other offenses. Although he was initially jailed pending trial, he was released in May on a $60,000 bond. The Jabara’s were in fact Christian, not Muslim, but the stereotype is so ignorant as it is pervasive, tied to brown skin, and images of Ali Baba on a flying carpet, that Sikh Temples have been attacked and Sikhs murdered under the assumption that because they wore turbans they were Muslim. Later in 2016, police in Garden City, Kansas arrested three white men with a large stockpile of weapons. Calling themselves the “Crusaders”, they had planned to blow up an apartment complex housing Somali Muslims. Police reports said their “cult of violence and hate” planned to create a bloodbath in order to ignite a religious war. Also in October a white man from southern California man was arrested for threatening the Islamic centre of southern California. Police found a large stockpile of weapons in his home. Closer to the presidential election, in early November 2016, Hussein Saeed Al Nahdi, a Saudi studying in the US, was beaten and murdered near University of Wisconsin-Stout. Police officers found 24-year-old Al Nahdi unconscious and bleeding from his mouth and nose when they arrived on the scene of the crime. A white man from Minnesota was charged with the murder. Also in early November, four 13–15-year-old Syrian refugees were beaten in St Louis, with one seriously injured. They had been in the US, seeking refuge, for only 6 weeks. In December 2016 in Simi Valley, Ca. two white men approached Muslim worshippers leaving a mosque and shouted racial slurs at them. A fight broke out and an “unidentified man” stabbed one of the Muslims, who was taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries. The attack followed months during which mosques across California had been receiving letters calling Muslims “vile and filthy people” and threatening genocide. Murders occurring early in 2017 reveal a convergence of nativist and anti-Muslim sentiments, making it difficult to determine if one view was more causal than the other. In February 2017, two Indian men, reportedly mistaken for Iranians (in one account) or “middle easterners” (in another account), were shot in a bar outside of Kansas City, Missouri. The white male assailant yelled, “Get out of my country” before opening fire. Srinivas Kuchibhotla died shortly after the shooting while Alok Madasani recovered from his injuries. On March 2nd, Harnish Patel was murdered outside of his home in Lancaster, South Carolina after returning from closing his store. The following day, Deep Rai, a 39-year-old Sikh man was shot in Kent, Washington while he was working on his car in his driveway. He was told to “go back to [his] country”.10 While there is no proof of an Islamophobic element in the shootings of these two Indian men, one fatal, the anti-immigrant tone is clear. Nonetheless, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between anti-South Asian racism and Islamophobic racism as South Asians of all religions have been murdered under the assumption that they are Muslims (Cainkar 2018a). There has also been a post-Trump election increase in attacks on mosques: In January 2017 an arsonist completely destroyed the Islamic Center of Victoria, Texas and another mosque under construction in Texas was burnt to the ground. Also in Texas, Muslim Free America banners were spotted in a range of locations, including university campuses. In February 247

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2017, a white man dressed in fatigues, wearing a backpack, and on roller blades threatened to bomb a mosque in suburban Des Plaines, Illinois. That same month a mosque in suburban Tampa was arsoned. In August, 2017 a Somali-American mosque in Bloomington, Minnesota was bombed (a map of mosque attacks can be found at www.aclu.org/map/ nationwide-anti-mosque-activity). As indicated above, Muslims are not alone in experiencing increasing levels of hate. Hate crimes increased against Latinx, African Americans, Jews, Asian Americans, and the LGBTQ community after Donald Trump’s candidacy and election as president. The SPLC Hatewatch Staff reported in February 2017 that “The number of hate groups in the United States rose for a second year in a row in 2016 as the radical right was energized by the candidacy of Donald Trump.”11 Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino said, “Attacks against Muslims tend to be more violent than those against Jews . . . That is partly because Muslims are ‘more identifiable’ when in religious attire and have a much higher degree of prejudice directed towards them.”12 Zainab Arain, coordinator of the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Department to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia, concluded, “The presidential election campaign and the Trump administration have tapped into a sea of bigotry and hate that has resulted in the targeting of American Muslims and other minority groups.”13 Non-violent harassment was the most frequent incident type documented by CAIR in the second quarter of 2017, followed by hate crimes involving physical violence or property damage, and after that, FBI or other government agency “inappropriate targeting”. Arain concluded that “If acts of bias impacting the American Muslim community continue as they have been, 2017 could be one of the worst years ever for such incidents.”14 CAIR’s latest report tabulates 195 anti-Muslim hate crimes through the first nine months of 2017, a 20 per cent increase from the same period in 2016. Assaults, threats against mosques, bullying of school children, and Islamophobic statements made by elected officials continued to take place in 2018.15

Trump’s executive orders Within a week of his inauguration as President of the United States, Donald Trump issued an executive order that included a “Muslim ban” and a refugee ban, institutionalizing Islamophobia into law. The executive order titled “Protecting The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States” was signed by Trump on 27 January 2017.16 It stated: “I hereby proclaim that the entry of nationals of Syria as refugees is detrimental to the interests of the United States and thus suspend any such entry.” Among other things, this order indefinitely suspended admissions of Syrian refugees, suspended all refugee admissions for 120 days, and limited the total flow of refugees into the United States. When reinstated, refugee admissions would be permitted only for nationals of countries for whom members of Trump’s Cabinet deem can be properly vetted. The temporary ban on refugee admissions was ended on 24 October 2017 when Donald Trump signed a new executive order calling for a 90-day review of the programme for 11 countries his administration deemed “high risk”: Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, South Sudan, and North Korea. The same January executive order stated: Numerous foreign-born individuals have been convicted or implicated in terrorism-related crimes since 11 September 2001, including foreign nationals who entered the United States after receiving visitor, student, or employment visas, or who entered through the United States refugee resettlement program. 248

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The EO barred all persons from certain “terror-prone” countries from entering the United States for 90 days. The countries included were Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia, although Iraq was shortly thereafter removed from the list. Trump argued that, “What we did was, we focused on, instead of religion, danger” (Cainkar 2017). However, data compiled by sociologist Charles Kurzman revealed, “since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, no one has been killed in the United States in a terrorist attack by anyone who emigrated from or whose parents emigrated from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, the seven countries targeted in the order’s 90-day visa ban.”17 This section of the Executive Order was ruled unconstitutional in two appellate courts because it smacks of “religious animus” and violates the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .” President Trump issued two new versions of the order, both of which were challenged by litigation. The US Supreme Court nonetheless ruled that implementation of the order could proceed while appeals are being heard. The US Supreme Court heard testimony for and against the ban in April 2018 and issued a decision in June upholding the ban.

Conclusion Rising hate crimes and recent government policies provide strong evidence that Islamophobia has reached new heights in the United States on both ideological and structural levels. AntiMuslim actions are ideologically supported through claims that American values are superior to those of Muslims, fabricated claims of an inherent global Muslim hatred of Americans, and persistent suggestions that Muslims are morally inferior human beings. This latter claim of innate inferiority, used to oppress and segregate other groups, has a long, long history in the US. In the latter half of the 20th century, such a conceptualization of Arabs and Muslims was widely promoted and deployed in the US to manufacture consent for American imperial policies in the “middle east” (Cainkar 2018a), therein producing racialized understandings that led to massive collective backlash after the 9/11 attacks. The 21st century US Islamophobia movement expanded and domesticated the Muslim threat to include “civilization jihad” and cultural takeover, emulating European anxieties one thousand years back. This movement is now joined by white supremacists allies, and its ideas, embraced by the President of the United States and his Administration, are shaping policy at the top. Consistent with white supremacist ideology, we can expect the pattern of mass killings by whites in the US to be viewed as exceptions to inherent goodness, and any transgressions by Muslims as proof of inherent badness.

Notes 1 For an illustration of media treatment of Muhammad Ali I highly recommend the film The Trials of Muhammad Ali. 2 For example, on a Sunday before the 2008 presidential election, every copy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contained a copy of this DVD. 3 See www.splcenter.org/news/2018/02/21/year-hate-trump-buoyed-white-supremacists-2017-sparkingbacklash-among-black-nationalist. 4 Commenting on the role of national leadership in promoting or dissipating hate, hate crimes expert Brian Levin (2017) reports a 45% national decrease in hate crimes after President Bush’s speech on 17 September 2001 “promoting tolerance”, as compared to a doubling in hate crimes after Candidate Trump’s tweet on 7 December 2015calling for a “Muslim ban.” 5 I have heard more in depth analyses of the complexities of the behaviour of dogs on the US media. 6 See www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-protecting-nation-foreign-terrorist-entryunited-states. 249

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7 See www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000004648650/trump-likens-refugees-to-trojan-horse.html. 8 You can view her forgiving her attacker at www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUt2tK1dSP4&feature=youtu. be. Watch her report on the assault: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jUZaYPzL58. See also Xaykaothao (2016). 9 “The days surrounding the 15th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have seen a stunning increase in what may be anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States, ranging from arson to murder. In one case, a semi-truck driver appeared to deliberately drive his big rig into a Maryland mosque” (Morlin 2016). 10 See www.vox.com/latest-news/2017/3/6/14831620/violent-attacks-indians-us-anti-immigrant-trump. 11 See www.splcenter.org/news/2017/02/15/hate-groups-increase-second-consecutive-year-trumpelectrifies-radical-right. 12 See www.voanews.com/a/hate-crimes-rise-in-nine-major-us-cities-2017-preliminary-police-data/ 4195018.html. 13 CAIR press release, located at www.cair.com/press-center/press-releases/14476-cair-report-shows2017-on-track-to-becoming-one-of-worst-years-ever-for-anti-muslim-hate-crimes.html. 14 See www.cair.com/press-center/press-releases/14476-cair-report-shows-2017-on-track-to-becomingone-of-worst-years-ever-for-anti-muslim-hate-crimes.html. 15 Updated reports of incidents are located at www.cair.com/press-center/press-releases.html. 16 See www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/27/executive-order-protecting-nation-foreignterrorist-entry-united-states. 17 See www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/politics/a-sweeping-order-unlikely-to-reduce-terrorist-threat. html?_r=0.

References Ali, W, Duss, M., Fang, L., Keyes, S. and Shakir, F. 2011. Fear, Inc. Washington, DC: Center for American Progress. Alsultany, E. 2012. Arabs and Muslims in the Media Race and Representation after 9/11. New York: New York University Press. Ansari, A. 2016. FBI: Hate Crimes Spike, Most Sharply Against Muslims. CNN, November 15. Retrieved from www.cnn.com/2016/11/14/us/fbi-hate-crime-report-muslims. Bail, C. 2012. The Fringe Effect: Civil Society Organizations and the Evolution of Media Discourse about Islam since the September 11th Attacks. American Sociological Review, 77, 6. Bayoumi, M. 2015. This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. New York: New York University Press. Cainkar, L. 2009. Homeland Insecurity: The Arab/Muslim American Experience after 9/11. New York: New York University Press. Cainkar, L. 2017. Constructing and Containing the “Muslim Threat” Through Immigration and Refugee Policies: An Analysis of Donald Trump’s Words and Actions. Paper presented at “Workshop on Religion and Migration”, Arizona State University, Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, 28 April. Cainkar, L. 2018a. Fluid Terror Threat: A Genealogy of the Racialization of Arab, Muslim, and South Asian Americans Amerasia Journal, 44, 27–60. Cainkar, L. 2018b. Hegemonic Femininity and Hijab as a Human Right. In K. McCanders (ed.), Arabs at Home and in the World: Human Rights, Gender Politics, and Identity. New York: Routledge. Cainkar, L. and Selod, S. 2018. Review of Race Scholarship and the War on Terror. Journal of the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 4, 165–177. Cauterucci, C. 2017. “It Could Have Been Any One of Us”: Muslim Community Mourns Murdered Teen Nabra Hassanen. Slate, 22 June. Retrieved from www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2017/06/22/ after_nabra_hassanen_s_murder_virginia_muslims_resolve_to_carry_on_in_spite.html CBS Chicago. 2017. Man Berates Muslim Girls at Suburban Restaurant. CBS Chicago, 6 June. Retrieved from http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2017/06/06/muslim-girls-verbally-abused-restaurant. Council on American-Islamic Relations and the University of California, Berkeley Center for Race and Gender. 2016. Confronting Fear: Islamophobia and its Impact in the United States. Retrieved from www. islamophobia.org/images/ConfrontingFear/Final-Report.pdf. Diouf, S. 2013. Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas, 15th Anniversary Edition. New York: NYU Press. 250

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Feffer, J. 2012. Islamophobia and the 2010 Election: Though Obama’s Policies on Islam and the Middle East Differ Little from his Republican Challengers, the Right Still Claims He is Pro-Islamic. Mother Jones, 29 March. Hatewatch. 2016. Update: More Than 400 Incidents of Hateful Harassment and Intimidation Since the Election. SPLC, 15 November. Retrieved from www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/11/15/ update-more-400-incidents-hateful-harassment-and-intimidation-election. Kishi, K. 2016. Anti-Muslim Assaults Reach 9/11-Era Levels, FBI Data Show. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/21/anti-muslim-assaults-reach-911-eralevels-fbi-data-show. Levin, B. 2017. Responses to the Increase in Religious Hate Crimes. Statement of Prof. Brian H Levin to the United States Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, 7 May. Lewis, B. 1993. Islam and the West, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mamdani, M. 2002. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim. American Anthropologist, 104, 766–775. Moghahed, D. 2013. Islamophobia is Made Up. The Islamic Monthly. Retrieved from www.theislamic monthly.com/islamophobia-is-made-up. Morlin, B. 2016. Experts Seeing Spike in Possible Anti-Muslim Hate Crimes. 13 September. Retrieved from www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/09/13/experts-seeing-spike-possible-anti-muslim-hate-crimes. Rana, J. 2011. Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in the South Asian Diaspora. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rogers, H. 2016. Cellphone Footage Captures Alleged Assault of Chicago Muslim Women. NBC Chicago, 14 August. Retrieved from www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/alleged-assault-chicago-muslimwomen-hate-crime-390039261.html. Said, E. 1981. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine how We See the Rest of the World. New York: Pantheon. Said, E. 1997. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine how We See the Rest of the World. New York: Vintage Books. Selod, S. and Embrick, D. 2013. Racialization and Muslims: Situating the Muslim Experience in Race Scholarship. Sociology Compass, 7, 644–655. Selod, S. and Garner, S. 2015. The Racialization of Muslims: Empirical Studies of Islamophobia. Critical Sociology, 41, 9–19. Selvam, A. 2017. White Man Harasses Muslim Teens at Suburban Chicago Mexican Restaurant. Eater, 7 June. Retrieved from https://chicago.eater.com/2017/6/7/15754568/anti-muslim-incident-teengirls-video-chicago-suburb-hickory-hills-pepes-mexican-restaurant. Shohat, E. 2012. The Moorish Atlantic: Orientalism/Occidentalism between the Middle East and the Americas. In E. Alsultany and E. Shohat (eds), Between the Middle East and the Americas: The Cultural Politics of Diaspora. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Suerth, J. 2017. Nabra Hassanen’s Murder Highlights the Challenges of Designating a Crime a Hate Crime. CNN, 21 June. Retrieved from www.cnn.com/2017/06/21/us/nabra-hassenen-hate-crimedesignation-challenge-trnd/index.html. Talbot, M. 2015. The Story of a Hate Crime: What Led to the Murder of Three Muslim Students in Chapel Hill? The New Yorker, 22 June. Wang, A. 2017. “Final Act of Bravery”: Men who were Fatally Stabbed Trying to Stop Anti-Muslim Rants Identified. Washington Post, 27 May. Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com/news/postnation/wp/2017/05/27/man-fatally-stabs-2-on-portland-ore-train-after-they-interrupted-his-antimuslim-rants-police-say/?utm_term=.0febd79c3159. Xaykaothao, D. 2016. Woman Who Attacked Somali Agrees to Assault Charge. Minnesota Public Radio, 17 October. Retrieved from www.mprnews.org/story/2016/10/17/asma-jama-applebeessomali-victim-attacker-pleads-guilty.

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20 Muslim American youth and post-9/11 Islamophobia Interfaith activism and the limits of religious multiculturalism Sunaina Maira

Introduction The heightened Islamophobia that has been stoked in the US by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and election, as well as his anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant policies, intensified the Islamophobia that was consolidated after 11 September 2001. Muslim American communities have been on the frontlines of struggles against racism and nativism since the events of 9/11. Young people who belong to the “9/11 generation”, in particular, and who have come of age after 2001 live in a moment when Muslim, Arab, and Middle Eastern Americans are viewed as the enemy within. Under the PATRIOT Act (2001) and with the expanded powers given by the US state to law enforcement and intelligence agencies to “preempt” terrorism, Arab, South Asian (particularly Pakistani), Afghan, Iranian, and Muslim Americans in general have been subjected to surveillance as well as detention and deportation. Yet the racial othering and surveillance targeting Muslim and Arab American youth did not begin on 11 September 2001. This Islamophobia and Arabophobia (or anti-Arab racism) is not exceptional, but situated in the longer, global history of US imperial policies in West and South Asia and in relation to other, domestic processes of criminalization, surveillance, and elimination of racialized peoples by the US state. This chapter is drawn from an ethnographic study, conducted in Silicon Valley in northern California between 2007 and 2011, in the South Bay Area and in the nearby cities of Fremont/ Hayward that have a large Afghan population (Maira 2016). The study explores the political subjecthood of young people targeted in the War on Terror and in the context of neoliberal multiculturalism. It is based on my interviews and fieldwork with college-age Arab, South Asian, and Afghan American youth (largely Muslim but also including non-Muslims) – some of whom but not all were involved in political organizing. The larger project focuses on how these youth turned to rights – especially civil rights and human rights – to respond to Islamophobia, racism, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and how they simultaneously grappled with the limits of rights-based activism. In this essay, I focus on the ways in which responses to Islamophobia in the 9/11 generation have often been based on a framework of liberal interfaith 252

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activism and civic engagement, and explore the implications of this turn to interfaith organizing for Muslim American political subjecthood and national identity. I argue here that liberal interfaith programs are often a funnel for Muslim American youth into state-sanctioned “moderate” politics and a means to contain more “radical” critiques of Islamophobia that would situate it in the imperial history of the US and its global policies of expansion, containment, and hegemony. This political repression has occurred in a postcivil rights moment and in the presumably post-racial era signaled by the election of Barack Obama. After Trump’s election, there was a similar push for interfaith coalition-building in response to intensified Islamophobia, which I will demonstrate generally strengthens a framework of national inclusion and liberal multiculturalism. While these coalitions have in many instances helped generate cross-racial solidarity, which is commendable and important, they have also helped produce what I call a religious multiculturalism embedded in “proper” politics for Muslim American youth.

Post-9/11 civil rights activism After 9/11, many national Muslim American organizations that were focused on political mobilization launched, or expanded, civil rights campaigns in response to the heightened discrimination faced by Muslims, Arabs, South Asians and “Muslim-looking” people (especially turbaned Sikh males) in the US “Know Your Rights” workshops were organized by coalitions involving Muslim, Arab, and South Asian American activists and lawyers who tried to do grassroots outreach to communities at mosques, gurudwaras (Sikh temples), and community spaces, as well as to youth. Given the mass detentions, deportations, and surveillance in the War on Terror, and the violations of constitutional rights under the USA-PATRIOT Acts I and II, this was certainly a necessary and strategic response to the crisis experienced by those defined as enemies of “homeland security” (I want to acknowledge that I participated in and organized some of these outreach workshops and campaigns myself). For example, the “Special Registration Program” established in 2002 required Muslim males who were non-citizens from 24 Muslim countries (and also North Korea) to register with the federal government, resulting in mass detentions and deportations – an infamous event many are not aware of today when discussing Trump’s anti-Muslim/Arab/African travel bans. By 2010, the language of Islamophobia had shifted more consistently toward focusing on the enemy lurking within the US at a moment when Obama publicly announced his strategy for ratcheting up the “Af-Pak” war; Deepa Kumar (2014, p. 172) argues this necessitated a national and moral panic about “homegrown terrorism” to legitimize the War on Terror. The turn to civil rights activism by Muslim Americans was described as a “new civil rights movement”, situating it in a genealogy of US civil rights and pivoting on African American struggles. This “Muslim rights” movement is focused on racial, and in this case, religious inclusion and I argue it helps produce a Muslim American politics legible in neoliberal democracy. The language of civil rights is one that generally resonates with the younger generation of Arab, South Asian, and Afghan Americans who find in it a framework for linking their critique of Islamophobia and racism to a longer history of struggles by other groups in the US (Kibria 2011, p. 74). For example, Aisha, a young Palestinian American woman who grew up in Union City (near Fremont), was very involved with both domestic and global Arab American activism as a student and after graduating from college. She translated Muslim and Arab American activism into a national discourse of civil rights, commenting, “African Americans had their struggle, they fought for their civil rights, and now Muslim Americans have to do the same. I think it’s 253

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about democracy.” In a sense, Muslim Americans were the canary in the coalmine after 9/11, and so provided an opportunity for redemption of US democracy at a moment of mounting international critique of violations of civil liberties of Muslim and Arab Americans. The turn to civil rights is a powerful theme in the production of cross-racial solidarity and is propelled by pragmatic concerns with addressing discrimination and profiling of Muslim and Arab Americans as well as the political imperative of resisting violations of civil liberties in the name of “national security” (Sirin and Fine 2008, p. 110). This has entailed a push for civic engagement and greater involvement with electoral politics and in the public square. For example, a survey in 2005 by the Muslim Public Affairs Council (2005, p. 4) found that a full 99% of Muslim American youth believed that national Muslim organizations should “engage in dialogue with the government and the general American public to get our rights”, and 94% thought that “Muslims should be involved in the American political process ‘even though they may disagree with the government’s foreign policy.’”1 The latter finding, where young Muslim Americans acknowledge their dissent against the US state’s overseas policies while simultaneously looking to the nation-state for bestowing rights, hints at the tension in the demand for “rights” if circumscribed by national “dialogue” and inclusion. Commenting on the shift to greater “civic engagement” by Muslim Americans, Selcuk Sirin and Michelle Fine (2008, p. 110) cite a remark by a young Muslim American man that illustrates how post9/11 civil rights activism can shore up a nationalist narrative: “Especially in this nation, when one strives to do something, anything is possible.” While not all youth engaged in civil rights campaigns are as celebratory of the American Dream, the turn to civil rights is fundamentally driven by an appeal to the nation-state as the arbiter of rights, individual as well as collective, and often by an assumption that liberal democracy is the horizon of political mobilization in response to Islamophobia and racial violence. For some youth I spoke to, however, political mobilization is framed in part by domestic civil rights but not confined by it, as they also engage with a discourse about imperialism and national sovereignty for overseas homelands, often via human rights, as I elaborate in the larger project (Maira 2016).

The interfaith movement In tandem with the focus on “Muslim civil rights”, Muslim Americans became increasingly active in a growing interfaith movement since 2001, including interfaith youth campaigns that emerged on college campuses and rapidly spread across the US since the early 1990s (Patel and Brodeur 2006). Muslim Americans who felt attacked or isolated after 9/11 often threw themselves into organizing interfaith programs on campus and in mosques and community centers (Afzal 2015). Interfaith youth programs generally involve various kinds of workshops, forums, and volunteer activities that include Muslim, Jewish, and Christian youth and attempt to connect the “Abrahamanic traditions”, through a paradigm that emphasizes commonalities among the religions of “the book” (i.e. the Bible). Interfaith youth activism has thus become a significant site for alliance-building, circumscribed by the parameters of religion, and also a platform for education about Islam. In some cases, however, it has also legitimized acceptable Muslim American identities and “proper” coalitional politics in the War on Terror. The focus on education and outreach by Muslim Americans is not itself problematic but it is apparent that the turn to liberal interfaith politics is part of a national strategy for managing race relations via a discourse of religious inclusion. One Muslim American community leader recalled that he told an advisor to President Bush after 9/11, “The president has to visit a mosque. You have to say ‘churches, synagogues, and mosques.’ When they say ‘Judeo-Christian,’ you 254

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should say, ‘Christians, Muslims, and Jews’” (cited in Bakalian and Bozorgmehr 2009, p. 181). Organizations such as CAIR and the Islamic Networks Group (ING) in the Bay Area have been actively involved in the interfaith movement; for example, ING does presentations about Islam for faith-based groups and participates in inter-faith programs, stating that it “recognizes the need for ongoing interfaith dialogue and cooperation in our increasingly multicultural and diverse society to bring about peace in our neighborhoods, our country, and the world”.2 Inclusion for Muslim Americans is thus framed through religious pluralism and as a strategy for winning political recognition for a faith-based community that belongs to, and is not outside, of the US multicultural state – a demand that in and of itself is not problematic, but only if it brackets a critique of the state beyond the domain of religion or culture. The problem is that in the post-9/11 context the interfaith movement is built on the same tenets of liberal inclusion that contain politics through liberal civil rights activism. Liberal, religious multiculturalism has been presented as a solution to the problem of Islamophobia, racial violence, and military occupation, obfuscating or containing a critique of the geopolitical imperatives of warfare and structural issues of race and racism. The “problem” Muslim Americans face is reduced to issues of inter-religious and inter-cultural fear, understanding, and acceptance that can be resolved on the terrain of culture and faith alone, without considering state violence. The irony is that liberal multiculturalism is perceived as a failure for both the left and the right: for conservatives and nativists in the US as well as the UK, liberal multiculturalism is blamed for undermining the “civic integration” of Muslims and “providing a space for militant radicals” or even for fostering violence or riots among Muslim youth in recent years (Esposito 2011, p. xxv; Modood 2002, p. 206). Yet religious multiculturalism, or multi-faithism, is sanctioned by the state and buttressed by the simultaneous trend within the Muslim American community, and among youth, emphasizing Islam as a religion that crosses national, ethnic, and racial boundaries. This pan-Islamic universalism contributes to a discourse of pluralism within Islam, but also to a discourse of Islam within religious pluralism, aligning it with liberal multiculturalism. The issue, however, is that this notion of ethnic diversity and cross-racial affiliation is often limited to forms of solidarity and boundary crossing that do not challenge the state and expose the root causes of Islamophobia. Interfaith “dialogue” projects involve state interventions in religion and the anointment of selected religious representatives and religious streams, thus promoting certain expressions of Islam and particular Muslim leaders (Hicks 2013; Aidi 2014, pp. 72–74). Arun Kundnani (2014, p. 77) points that out in the US as well as in Europe, a “state-sponsored Islamic leadership” has been established with the “multicultural recognition” of “new religious identities”, describing this as a shift to “multi-faith-ism” that creates a paradox for presumably secular states who now “endorse an official version of Islam.” Furthermore, liberal-progressive foundations and other groups have invested funds in interfaith projects; it is significant that youth are seen as “bridge builders” within this model of civic integration and inclusion (Ahuja, Gupta and Petsod 2004, p. 17; Afzal 2015, pp. 168, 173). Liberal interfaith coalitions, I argue, represent the boundaries of permissible responses by Muslim Americans to the War on Terror and critiques of Islamophobia. For example, Malaika, a Pakistani American woman who was born in Santa Clara and grew up in San Jose and Tracy, California, talked about coordinating an “interfaith club council” at her college and organizing events such as a lecture series for “Islam awareness week” and workshops such as one on “debunking stereotypes” about “women in Islam”. She commented wryly that the event was a “boring one, but it was necessary”. That is, if (non-Muslim) Americans just knew more about Islam and Muslims, they wouldn’t fear, hate, or suspect them. But it is also worth noting that Malaika describes these programs as “necessary”, for Muslim American youth have to grapple 255

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with fraught political choices in a climate of external as well as internal regulation of “proper” or safe politics – what statement going beyond the framework of liberal rights will not land you in prison? What action of cross-racial is really worth the risk? The politics of performing a “good” or moderate Muslim identity is fraught in a context in which the state sanctions liberal civil rights and Muslim American activism while criminalizing other forms of protest politics or political speech as anti-American or pro-terrorist, leading to self-regulation as well as internal divisions within Muslim and Arab American communities (Maira 2009). My analysis of “good” and “bad” Muslim political subjectivities builds on Mahmood Mamdani’s (2004, p. 15) argument in Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror, where he observes that after 9/11: President Bush moved to distinguish between “good Muslims” and “bad Muslims” . . . “bad Muslims” were clearly responsible for terrorism. At the same time, the president seemed to assure Americans that “good Muslims” . . . would undoubtedly support “us” in a war against “them.” . . . But . . . unless proved to be “good”, every Muslim was presumed to be “bad.” . . . The disciplinary framework of the good/bad Muslim subject is a bait-and-switch that regulates what constitutes acceptable politics and youth activism but it is also increasingly contested in the post-9/11 culture wars, including by Muslim American youth, activists, and organizations. Many interfaith programs tend to propound ideas of liberal “tolerance” and “dialogue” that are embedded in assumptions about multicultural/multifaith belonging and also neoliberal democracy, having grown out of the George W. Bush administration’s effort to push social services out of governmental agencies and into privatized “faith-based initiatives.” It is apparent that the growing “interfaith industry” that has burgeoned since 9/11 has drawn on liberal notions of pluralism to produce a religious multiculturalism. In the multicultural, post-racial state, the institutionalized “grammar of diversity” conceals deeper issues of political and economic inequality and focuses instead on cultural, and now religious, “diversity” (Ahmed 2012, p. 13; Melamed 2011). The problem is that the investment in religious multiculturalism is often at the expense of antiracist critiques of racial violence against South Asian, Afghan, and Arab Americans, and sometimes also at the expense of progressive inter-racial solidarity. The growing interfaith movement has significant implications for cross-racial and cross-class alliances as well as fissures in Silicon Valley. Iman, a Palestinian Muslim American who grew up in Santa Clara and attended Granada Islamic school, observed that interfaith alliances in the local Muslim American community often took precedence over solidarity with other immigrant groups. She lamented the lack of inter-racial solidarity with Latino/a youth during the high school walkouts and immigrant rights marches and mass protests by undocumented immigrants in 2006, observing: The Hispanic community in my high school was big and they organized a walk-out event when everyone left campus, and that was huge. And it would have been nice if the Muslim community made a bigger effort to participate. Because the Hispanic community in San Jose is huge. But instead I feel like we did outreach to like the Jewish community, or the Christian community. And we’d go to churches and synagogues and that was it. Iman’s comment struck me because it suggested that Muslim American youth at her high school in Santa Clara, and possibly also the Muslim American community in Silicon Valley at large, missed an important political opportunity to forge an alliance with the immigrant rights 256

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movement in the area, failing to connect the issues that Muslim (Arab, South Asian and other) immigrant communities were facing after 9/11 to those of Latino/as and others subjected to profiling, incarceration, and deportation. In general, interfaith and also liberal civil rights activism in Silicon Valley has not always tackled broader questions of police brutality or immigration that are considered outside the bounds of a proper or “moderate” Muslim American politics (though the Black Lives Matter movement that emerged at tail end of my research sparked more radical acts of solidarity between Muslim American activists and black and brown communities protesting police violence). There is also the vexed issue of alliances and fissures between “immigrant” Muslims (or Muslims of South Asian, Arab, Afghan and Iranian origin) and African American Muslims, in the context of the growing migration of Muslims to the US after 1965 from South and West Asia, including a class of highly educated, Muslim professionals (Abdullah 2013). Where does solidarity with Black struggles fit within interfaith coalitions and Muslim American youth activism? Inter-racial as well as class tensions have sometimes marred immigrant Muslims’ relations with African American Muslims, who are the largest US-born group of Muslims and constitute approximately one-third of the Muslim population (there is also a growing Latino/a Muslim community). Relations between Black and immigrant Muslim communities are a key issue for Muslim American youth and a point of contention for Muslim Americans at large (Jackson 2011). At the same time, it is apparent that in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are several sites in which cross-racial affiliations are produced between immigrant and Black Muslim communities, among youth and more generally, including on the terrain of civil rights or social justice organizing. Prominent in these interracial alliances are Muslim community leaders such as Imam Zaid Shakir, an African American Muslim cleric and one of the cofounders of the Zaytuna Institute in Berkeley. Laila, a Pakistani American who grew up in Fremont, recalled an event organized by the MSA (Muslim Student Association) on her campus focused on the war in Iraq, featuring Imam Zaid Shakir and two Iraq war veterans, as well as a collaboration between the MSA and the Black Student Union for Black History Month. For Laila, such events highlighting and creating linkages with African American youth demonstrated how to “promote more unity” among Muslim Americans of diverse racial backgrounds, via a critique of war and state violence. The affinity between Muslim American youth from immigrant communities and other US-born Muslim Americans partly grows out of a shared cultural and generational experience and also an understanding of being a racial minority and growing up with US racism (Aidi 2014; Daulatzai 2012). This new, cross-racial Muslim youth culture is also apparent in the ethnically and racially diverse Ta’leef Collective, a community organization in Hayward, which focuses on outreach to youth and converts and which fosters cross-racial community building via popular culture.

“Green” activism and political censorship A key element of many interfaith projects, especially those that attempt to perform a “good” Muslim citizenship, is volunteerism and community engagement compatible with neoliberal democracy. Mariyam, a Libyan/white American woman who was involved in a local chapter of the Muslim American Society since she was in high school, had participated in their interfaith youth projects which included cleanup programs with the Catholic church and the “Muslim Green Team”. The paradigm of interfaith volunteerism is part of a growing “green Muslim” movement that has connected faith-based community service tied to ideas of environmental stewardship and entrepreneurship.3 In and of itself volunteerism are not problematic, but it is the collusion between these activities with neoliberal policies of privatizing social services and 257

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the channeling of youth into “safe” politics, rather than more radical organizing, that warrants critique. Neoliberal governmentality and the erosion of social welfare provides the context in which interfaith programs provide yet another arena for the promotion of the virtues of productivity, autonomy, and self-reliance (Duggan 2003). This is compelling for Muslim Americans who can prove through public community service and volunteer initiatives that they are, indeed, model minorities or virtuous Americans. “Green” activism, it seems, is more easily wedded to liberal social justice models of interfaith youth organizing than antiwar and anti-occupation politics. For example, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, a second-generation (Black) Muslim American, is the author of Green Deen: What Islam Teaches about Protecting the Planet (2010), which has inspired regional networks of Muslim Americans who participate in volunteer projects. Abdul-Matin’s core mission is to “rebrand” Muslim Americans as environmental activists and “moderate” political actors, not extremists, stating: Look, everyone wants to know where the moderate Muslims are. They’re everywhere. They go to work, they go to school. Frankly, they’re boring – which is why the media doesn’t do any stories about them . . . I’m highlighting Sarah the Muslim who believes in recycling . . . I hope my book will re-label Muslims from terrorist to activist or, even better, environmentalists. I want Muslims to be known as the people who save water. (Ebrahimji 2010) While not all Muslims who engage in cleanup or recycling projects necessarily want to be interpellated as “moderate Muslims” who “save water”, these emerging forms of activism and especially volunteerism have come to define “moderate” political subjecthood for Muslim Americans. Of course, in the War on Terror, there is an understandable anxiety among Muslim American youth about being labeled “radical” given state surveillance and the moral panic about “radicalization” of Muslims, especially youth. But as a young CAIR activist from the Bay Area commented thoughtfully: Interfaith alliances have always been a big part of CAIR. Muslim Americans didn’t know how to open their doors to others ten years ago. But now the entire focus is on outreach, and in and of itself, it’s not the solution. Clearly there needs to be more work done . . . I think the more institutionalized this outreach is, the less useful it is. The interfaith movement has been increasingly institutionalized in liberal spheres such as the academy and non-profit organizations where interfaith dialogue has been promoted, and also, notably, in programs related to Israel/Palestine.4 In these interfaith (and intercultural) programs, involving the triad of Muslims, Christians and Jews or the dyad of MuslimJewish or Arab-Jewish dialogue, analyses of political conflict and structural inequity are displaced outside of the realm of the state to the domain of culture or religion, confined to what Mamdani (2004) calls “culture talk”. Intercultural and interfaith dialogue has achieved a preeminent role in the post-9/11 political field as the legitimate frame for discussing political questions, erasing issues of sovereignty, colonialism, and dispossession in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.5 However, I found that tensions related to Middle East politics and the systematic censorship of the Palestine question often ruptured interfaith coalitions on college campuses, forcing the question of anti-Arab racism to the surface and interrupting a liberal consensus. For example, Jenaan, a Palestinian/Korean/white American woman from San Jose, recalled that in the interfaith student group she belonged to at San Jose State University, some of the Jewish 258

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American students did not want Muslim youth to wear clothing or jewelry with the colors of the Palestinian flag. Jenaan protested: I was, like, “This isn’t the issue we’re discussing. I can wear whatever I wanna wear!” But they didn’t understand that, they were just, like, “Oh, you can’t wear red, you can’t wear black, you can’t wear green.” You know, the colors of Palestine. I was like, “I’m going to wear whatever the hell I want to wear! You can’t tell me what not to wear.” The campus interfaith program became a repressive site for Jenaan when the expression of her Palestinian national identity was censored and the “issue” suddenly became one of regulating permissible Arab political identities, however symbolic (arguably Jewish students would not be asked to remove the Star of David, although it is also an element of the Israeli flag, let alone the colors blue and white; this would be considered anti-Semitic yet this anti-Palestinian racism was considered acceptable). This vignette illustrates the ways in which interfaith alliances limit political solidarity and how difficult it is for a politicized or nationalist Arab American identity to be inserted into religious multicultural alliances – as also politicized or anti-imperialist Pakistani or Afghan identities. It could be said that the green of environmentalism is more permissible for Muslim American youth politics than the green of “red-black-and-green” Arab/Palestinian nationalism. Many interfaith youth programs do address the “conflict” in Israel–Palestine (notably, the word occupation is rarely used, let alone colonialism or apartheid) but only through a model of Jewish-Muslim/Christian dialogue. For example, Sabina, a young Indian American woman from Santa Clara who was active in the MSA, had participated in an interfaith program on Jewish-Muslim relations for high school students, organized by Abraham’s Vision; she said that the discussion got “pretty heated” when the participants began speaking about the “Israel–Palestine issue”. She recalled that the organizers did not want youth to get into a “political discussion” or “arguments” and steered them away from the topic. In their view, she said, The point is to use this space as to way unify and see what are possible solutions for the future. They wanted us to relate our identity being a Muslim or a Jew and why those identities made us sympathize with this issue . . . They made it seem so simple and they knew how to speak. That would make us so mad because we didn’t know how to respond.6 Sabina added that the program received an award at the time from President Clinton, underscoring the ways the US state actively supports and promotes interfaith projects that steer youth away from critiques of Middle East politics and US foreign policy and funnels them into depoliticized spaces focused on religious and cultural identity talk. According to youth I spoke to, the Palestine question is also situated by interfaith programs in a discourse resting on the fallacy of neutrality or not “taking sides”. But in a charged political field in which a pro-Israel narrative has long represented the mainstream of US politics and media, an uncritical or “neutral standpoint” is actually a deferral to the norm. The erasure of issues of racial violence, imperialism, and dispossession via a liberal interfaith model is what some progressive Muslim American critics have called the “faithwashing” of the politics of “apartheid and occupation” in Israel–Palestine (Saeed 2014). It is clear that a political analysis of modern conflict and warfare in Israel–Palestine, in particular, and also generally in West or Southwest Asia, is elided by focusing on presumably incommensurable cultural and religious differences that breed “hate”, between Muslims and non-Muslims. 259

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The deferral of anti-imperial and antiracist politics has to be situated in a context in which, as Steven Salaita (2006) and others have pointed out, protests of Israeli state policies, including on college campuses, are viewed as automatically anti-Semitic and outside the bounds of not just freedom of expression but also civil politics. Student activism for Palestinian rights is routinely subjected to disciplinary measures and censorship by campus administrators as well as off-campus partisan groups and activists are often blacklisted and defamed.7 The systemic repression of Palestinian/pan-Arab nationalism and Arab American politics has occurred in tandem with US interventions in the Middle East and ongoing, unconditional support for Israel (see Abraham 1994; Orfalea 2006; Said 2000). Given the centrality of the Palestine question for Arab American politics and also for pan-Islamic activism in the US, an Arab American political identity or anti-Zionist Muslim identity fits uneasily within multicultural identity politics in the US, which can accommodate only a de-politicized Arab or Muslim American identity (Naber 2008). It is also apparent that in some cases, Arabs are subsumed within the master category of “Muslim” and that the conflation of Muslim-ness with Arabness has been simultaneously consolidated and unsettled after 9/11.8 This is one of the tensions that troubles the production of interfaith coalitions that privilege religion and undermines their relationship to antiracist, antiwar movements, including to campaigns involving radical Muslim Americans. Clearly, not all youth who participate in interfaith programs on campuses or in community settings support a liberal discourse of diversity that evades a political critique of dominant nationalisms, and some vigorously challenged this move, as Jenaan’s and Sabina’s observations suggest. I also want to acknowledge that there is interfaith organizing around the country that has focused on progressive, cross-racial, grassroots organizing; for example, the Inner-City Muslim Action Network in Chicago, which addresses urban poverty and police brutality and engages in direct services, social justice organizing, and arts programming (see Aidi 2014, p. 186). There is also a growing progressive interfaith movement that has mobilized in support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement opposing Israeli occupation and racism, including groups such as Sabeel and American Muslims for Palestine that have been involved in campaigns for divestment from Israel by churches. However, the deflection of radical critiques of the state through liberal interfaith activism is important to consider as a sanctioned response to Islamophobia that foregrounds liberal models of religion as the basis of proper political subjecthood. Muslim liberalism thus displaces radical racialism in the multicultural economy of difference and the “post-racial” era.

Conclusion I want to conclude by noting that there have indeed been cross-class and interracial alliances challenging the parameters of acceptable Muslim American politics and liberal civil rights activism, forged by progressive Muslim, South Asian, and Arab American activists and involving Latino/as, African Americans, and Muslim Americans, particularly in movements focused on immigrant and civil rights in San Francisco and Oakland. There have also been anti-imperial and antiracist coalitions forged with antiwar and Black Lives Matter activists and Native Americans, such as those led by young activists with the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) chapter in San Francisco in the 2000s (an organization which later morphed into the Arab Resources and Organizing Center which is deeply involved in joint struggles). One prominent instance of cross-ethnic coalition building in Silicon Valley has been the solidarity of progressive Japanese American activists with Muslim and Arab American communities since 9/11 in San Jose, as well as in northern California in general, reflective of the larger post-9/11 alliance forged by Japanese Americans across 260

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the nation. In most instances, this Muslim/Arab-Japanese American solidarity connected the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II to the contemporary demonization and profiling of Muslim Americans as enemy aliens, and in some cases, it has also extended to opposing the war in Iraq and supporting Palestinian and Arab American activists targeted for surveillance and deportation (Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress September 11 Committee 2007). Thus the turn to civil rights has been accompanied by transnational solidarity with others suffering from US imperial violence, and contestations over the which forms of politics are “civil” and who is human, which subjects deserve solidarity or the recognition of rights and which groups must be evicted and exceptionalized to save the nation.

Notes 1 I want to point out that the MPAC survey was conducted among youth (14–25 years) attending the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America, who were strongly affiliated with Islamic institutions (Muslim Public Affairs Council 2005, p. 2). 2 See www.ing.org/speakers/page.asp?num=14. 3 For example, see http://green-muslims.org. 4 The US state has since World War II increasingly adopted an official, liberal multiculturalism so that the state is not only the “guarantor of rights” but also assumed to be antiracist, even as it directly or indirectly suppresses movements that demand genuine racial justice (Reddy 2011, pp. 194, 210). 5 For example, this issue came to a head in Muslim American media and activist circles when a delegation of Muslim American leaders spent a year at the Hartmann Institute in Jerusalem. One of the delegates concluded that despite her previous reservations of censorship of Palestine in interfaith programs, the dialogue with Jewish Zionists convinced her to be less critical of Zionism, in an article published in Time during the Israeli invasion of the West Bank and Gaza in summer 2014 (Choudhury 2014). 6 Sabina is referring here to the Unity Program of Abraham’s Vision for high school students, focused on Jewish–Muslim relations, Islam, and Judaism. See www.abrahamsvision.org/programs/unity-program.html. 7 See the extensive report by Palestine Legal (2015). 8 I wish to thank Saree Makdisi for this point about Arab-ness as dissolving into the “master category” of Muslim-ness.

References Abdullah, Z. 2013. “American Muslims in the Contemporary World: 1965 to the Present.” In The Cambridge Companion to American Islam, edited by Julianne Hammer and Omid Safi (pp. 65–82). New York: Cambridge University Press. Abdul-Matin, I. 2010. Green Deen: What Islam Teaches about Protecting the Planet. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler. Abraham, N. 1994. “Anti-Arab Racism and Violence in the United States.” In The Development of ArabAmerican Identity, edited by Ernest McCarus. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Afzal, A. 2015. Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas. New York: NYU Press. Ahmed, S. 2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ahuja, S., Gupta, P., and Petsod, D. 2004. Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian Communities in the San Francisco Bay Area: An Introduction for Grantmakers. San Francisco, CA: Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (November). Aidi, H. D. 2014. Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture. New York: Pantheon. Bakalian, A. and Bozorghmehr, M. 2009. Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans Respond. Berkeley, CA: UC Press. Choudhury, R. 2014. “What a Muslim American Learned from Zionists.” Time, 24 June. http://time. com/2917600/muslim-american-zionists/ Daulatzai, S. 2012. Black Star, Crescent Moon: The Muslim International and Black Freedom beyond America. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 261

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Duggan, L. 2003. The Twilight of Inequality: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Ebrahimji, M. 2010. “Author Wants to Rebrand Muslims from Terrorists to Environmentalists.” CNN Belief Blog, 16 November 16. Retrieved from http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/16/authorwants-to-rebrand-muslims-from-terrorists-to-environmentalists (accessed 23 September 2011). Esposito, J. L. 2011. “Introduction.” In Islamophobia: The Challenge of Pluralism in the 21st Century, edited by J. L. Esposito and I. Kalin (pp. xxi–xxxv). New York: Oxford University Press. Hicks, R. R. 2013. “Religious Pluralism, Secularism, and Interfaith Endeavors.” In The Cambridge Companion to American Islam, edited by J. Hammer and O. Safi (pp. 156–169). New York: Cambridge University Press. Jackson, S. 2011. “Muslims, Islam(s), Race, and American Islamophobia.” In Islamophobia: The Challenge of Pluralism in the 21st Century, edited by J. L. Esposito and I. Kalin (pp. 93–106). New York: Oxford University Press. Kibria, N. 2011. Muslims in Motion: Islam and National Identity in the Bangladeshi Diaspora. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kumar, D. 2014. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire. Chicago, IL: Haymarket. Kundnani, A. 2014. The Muslims are Coming: Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror. London: Verso. Maira, S. 2009. Missing: Youth, Empire, and Citizenship After 9/11. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Maira, S. 2016. The 9/11 Generation: Youth, Rights, and Solidarity in the War on Terror. New York: NYU Press. Mamdani, M. 2004. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror. New York: Pantheon. Melamed, J. 2011. Represent and Destroy: Rationalizing Violence in the New Racial Capitalism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Modood, T. 2002. “Muslims and the Politics of Multiculturalism in Britain.” In Critical Views of September 11: Analyses from around the World, edited by E. Hershberg and K. W. Moore (pp. 194–208). New York: New Press. Muslim Public Affairs Council. 2005. Special Report: Religion and Identity of Muslim American Youth PostLondon Attacks. Washington, DC: Muslim Public Affairs Council. Naber, N. 2008. “Introduction: Arab Americans and US Racial Formations.” In Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11: From Invizible Citizens to Visible Subjects, edited by A. Jamal and N. Naber (pp. 1–45). Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress September 11 Committee. 2007. “Building a Movement to End this Illegal and Immoral War.” Amerasia, 33(3), 11–124. Orfalea, G. 2006. The Arab Americans: A History. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press. Palestine Legal. 2015. “The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Movement Under Attack in the US.” Retrieved from https://palestinelegal.org/the-palestine-exception (accessed 10 December 2017). Patel, E. and Brodeur, P. (eds). 2006. Building the Interfaith Youth Movement: Beyond Dialogue to Action. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Saeed, S. 2014. “An Interfaith Trojan Horse: Faithwashing Apartheid and Occupation.” Islamic Monthly, 1 July. Retrieved from www.theislamicmonthly.com/an-interfaith-trojan-horse-faithwashing-apartheidand-occupation. Said, E. W. 2000. “America’s Last Taboo.” New Left Review 6 (Nov/Dec), 45–53. Salaita, S. 2006. Anti-Arab Racism in the USA: Where It Comes from and what it Means for Politics Today. London: Pluto Press. Sirin, S. and Fine, M. 2008. Muslim American Youth: Understanding Hyphenated Identities through Multiple Methods. New York: NYU Press.

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21 Diasporas and dystopias on the beach Burkini wars in France and Australia Shakira Hussein, Scheherazade Bloul and Scott Poynting

Introduction Islamophobia is internationalised. The othering depictions, practices and policies of anti-Muslim racism are shared and recycled throughout the global ‘West’, yet even as an ideology of empire they must take root on national soil. The inflections of national culture and history produces some distinctive contrasts and ironies in the way Islamophobia is manifested in different nations; this chapter explores some of these by contrasting the burkini (also spelled ‘burqini’) as a story of redemption and reconciliation in Australia after the 2007 Cronulla riots with that of the ‘burkini wars’ on French beaches during 2016–2017. The burkini itself is an Australian-designed ‘modest’ swimming costume originated in 2004 by Lebanon-born fashion designer Aheda Zanetti to enable Muslim women to enjoy the Australian seaside in comfort and style. The bikini, of course, was originally a French design, emerging in the early post-war period. It achieved fame almost simultaneously with the then-young French actress Brigitte Bardot, who starred in Manina: The Girl in the Bikini in 1953. So famous, in fact, that Front National leader Marine Le Pen during the beachside battles over the burkini in 2016, held up Bardot, her bikini and her erstwhile director-husband Roger Vadim, as icons of true France: ‘The French beaches are those of Bardot and Vadim’ (cited in Fuggle 2016). In the early 1960s, ironically, Australia had its own ‘bikini wars’, so called, when bans against women wearing too little clothing in the beach were notoriously enforced, after official interventions on Sydney’s ‘iconic’ Bondi waterfront in 1945, and against a Hollywood actress and a ‘local beauty’ alike in the 1950s (Waverley Library 2009; Drewe 2015, p. 117). Sophie Fuggle (2016) comments thus on Le Pen’s ethnocentric iconography: By invoking French nostalgia for the famous duo and the era they represented – and then linking the burkini to the recent attacks in Nice and Normandy – Le Pen isn’t just harking back to a mythical time before covered-up Muslim women ruined the eroticism of the deserted French coastline; she is also playing on deep-rooted national anxieties by offering

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a reminder that the French beach hasn’t always been a place of rest and relaxation. It has also been the site of violence, trauma, and invasion. Fuggle (2016) observes, ‘The beach has long been a powerful symbol in France and a repository of French national identity.’ Legion indeed are the commentators who have remarked the very same about Australia.1 Not least was this observation repeated at the time of Sydney’s 2005 Cronulla riots, when the racist vigilante mob, fired with Islamophobia, vowed to ‘fight them on the beaches’ (Hussein and Poynting 2017). Fuggle clearly has a point about the prior meaning of the beach in French national culture. Just Google ‘France’, ‘iconic’, ‘photo’ and ‘beach’ in any permutation, and up will come pictures of Normandy and D-Day. Google ‘Australia’, ‘iconic’, ‘photo’ and ‘beach’, and you will inevitably be presented with Max Dupain’s iconic and beautiful photograph of ‘The Sunbaker’ (1937), on Culburra Beach.2 There is another beach photograph by that great Australian photographer, whimsical but scarcely less beautiful: ‘Nuns at Newport Beach 1960’.3 In this, another black and white classic, three nuns clothed head to toe in veils and habits, walk along the windswept sand of Sydney’s northern peninsula. Indeed, in all their ‘clobber’. Virtually contemporaneous with Sydney’s ‘bikini wars’, it is hard to know whether Dupain is being mischievous, but it is more likely a gentle and egalitarian observation about the Australian beach being for everyone. According to the dominant narrative of the Cronulla riot in 2005 – and, as Hussein and Poynting (2017) point out, it was an Islamophobic narrative: the locals of Sutherland Shire, an exceptionally white, Anglo area in culturally diverse Sydney, had for years been ‘putting up with’ immigrant outsiders from the working-class western suburbs who, in addition to affronting ‘our women’, were exclusively responsible for littering the parks and beaches; uniquely involved in boisterousness and skylarking; played football on the sand; and dressed inappropriately for the beach by wearing too many clothes. (Poynting 2006) Cronulla beach, in the year of the London transport bombings and a couple of years after the Bali ones, was manifestly not for everyone. One of the provocations of the Cronulla riot had been a fight between a group of local, young, white, male surf-lifesavers and a group of Muslim Lebanese-background young men from the inland suburbs. The former had asserted that the beach belonged to them, since ‘Lebs can’t swim’. As we shall see below, in the backwash of Cronulla, attempts at intercultural bridge-building recruited photogenic young Lebanesebackground women as volunteer lifesavers at Cronulla (lifesaving clubs, like the beach, having been an Australian icon for generations), sporting the recently designed burkini in the traditional lifesaving colours. The burkini thus came to (global) fame as an assertion of beachside belonging, a gesture of inclusion, of participation in traditional (dominant) Australian culture: a place in the national photograph. In short, it functioned as an instrument of integration in two directions, entering into the self-defined Australian ‘mainstream’, and being drawn into that mainstream. It is indeed ironic that it came to signify the opposite in France, and in the ‘burkini war’ battles that were to be fought in Australia.

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The 2007 ‘Heart of the Nation’ advertisement for the national Murdoch broadsheet, The Australian, opens with a group of young people dressed in the distinctive yellow and red attire of Surf Lifesaving Australia sitting on a beach gazing out to sea as the sun sets into the ocean. As they rise to their feet, the viewer’s attention is drawn to the fact that one of the young lifeguards is wearing a full-body swimsuit – a garment which viewers would soon learn to call a burkini. The young lifesaver featured in the advertisement was Mecca Laa Laa, a participant in the ‘On the same wave’ program launched in the wake of the 2007 Cronulla riots by Surf Lifesaving Australia in partnership with Sutherland Shire Council and the Federal Department of Immigration and Citizenship to encourage young people, particularly those of ‘Middle Eastern background’, to participate in Surf Lifesaving (Fitzgerald and Giles n.d.). The story of reconciliation and healing as symbolised by the ‘On the same wave’ program and Mecca Laa Laa in particular received national and international media coverage. For Australians who had been left shaken by the riots, the image of Mecca Laa Laa in her Surf Lifesaving burkini provided a welcome reassurance that their country’s commitment to multicultural inclusion had been reasserted. Though the burkini was an obvious target for racist derision and abuse, Susie Khamis’s assessment that it ‘makes the Australian beach a far more inclusive, accommodating space’ was a widely shared sentiment (Khamis 2010, p. 387). Yet eleven years after The Australian had featured Mecca Laa Laa in its ‘Heart of the Nation’ campaign, the newspaper turned its spotlight on her again. This time, however, it did not present her as a positive symbol of Australian nationhood. Rather, it was outraged that the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) had provided sponsorship for the ‘Faith, Fashion, Fusion: Muslim Women’s Style in Australia’ exhibition (in which Laa Laa was a prominent feature) from Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum to hold showings in Malaysia and Indonesia. Australian newspapers published articles and editorials on this topic, with The Australian’s (2018) editorial proclaiming that DFAT was ‘spending taxpayers’ money pretending that Islamic dress is part of our cultural identity. It is not and never has been.’ The Australian’s about-face regarding Mecca Laa Laa and the burkini is in part an Antipodean echo of events in France, where following the truck murder of 86 people during Bastille Day celebrations in nearby Nice in July 2016, the mayor of Cannes banned ‘burkini’ fullcover swimming costumes from Cannes beaches as ‘a symbol of Islamic extremism’. Over thirty French mayors then did likewise, with the edicts causing international consternation after reports and photographs were published showing four armed police forcing a burkiniclad Muslim woman to remove clothing on the beach at Nice. Shortly afterwards, the French Council of State (Conseil d’Etat) overturned the edict by the town of Villenueve-Loubet on the grounds that it ‘seriously and clearly illegally breached fundamental freedoms’. The other bans were also overturned over the following few weeks. However, the topic of burkini bans was revived in June 2017 when the Mayor of Lorette in central France banned the burkini from a newly opened swimming area in June 2017 and then again in December 2017 in neighbouring Switzerland when city councillors in Geneva voted in favour of rules forcing women using the city’s swimming pools to wear bathers that revealed the arms and did not extend below the knee (Agerholm 2017). The story of the burkini in Australia and in France illustrates the way in which Islamophobic moral panics, like fashion, have the capacity to be transmitted across borders – an under-researched area in comparison to the vast amount of scholarship and political commentary that has been devoted to the global transmission of Islamist ideology. Islamophobic policies, publications and

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attacks in one location may variously serve to trigger, reinforce, or justify local Islamophobia. For those with a more liberal mindset, events like the attempt to ban the burkini in France are regarded as a warning about possible future developments in their own societies but may also serve as a reassurance that ‘their’ Islamophobia is worse than ‘our’ Islamophobia. However, The Australian’s shift from celebrating to demonising the burkini also illustrates the dual roles that have been established for Muslim fashion in post 9/11 Muslim-minority societies like Australia: on the one hand, such women are mobilised as a resource for community harmony and international commerce, on the other hand, they also provide a convenient target for scapegoating.

Background: anti-Muslim racism Internationally, conservative and far-right commentators have established a genre of dystopian literature forecasting a new Dark Age in which Europe is reduced to a state of servitude by Muslim immigrants from its former colonies. Hardline anti-Muslim writers including Bat Ye’or, Oriana Fallaci, Melanie Phillips and Ayaan Hirsi Ali have contributed to this ‘Eurabia’ discourse, while softer versions locating Muslims as an unruly population in need of discipline have become firmly established in centrist policy-making. In Australia, Europe has come to serve as a reference point for politicians and commentators seeking to address ‘the Muslim problem’ in terms of the need to avoid excessive multicultural accommodation. The origins of Europe’s ‘Muslim problem’ are assumed to lie within Muslims themselves and Europe’s failure to assert its own cultural supremacy rather than in the legacies of colonialism, migration and settlement. During and after the bloody Algerian War of Independence of 1954–1962, Algerians and other North Africans (Maghrebins) migrated to France where they were segregated to low-cost housing estates, popularised as quartiers de désespoir, ‘suburbs of despair’. As French citizens born and educated in France, many second and third generation French Muslims regard themselves as entitled to the same social, political, religious rights as other citizens (Arslan 2015). Since the failure of the anti-racist campaigns to achieve equality between Muslim immigrants and members of the receiving society, Islam in France has increasingly become an identity shelter for members of younger generations who are less familiar with the categorised ‘ethnic’ countries of their parents or grandparents and their associated language (ibid.). Within this context of social exclusion, Muslim women are among the most socio-economically marginalised in France (ibid.). Australian commentators have referenced European, especially French, regulation of Muslim women’s clothing since the 2004 prohibition on wearing religious symbols in French state schools. For example, Cory Bernardi, who served as a government Senator for the Liberal party from 2007 until breaking away to form the Australian Conservative party in 2017, wrote on his personal website that ‘If we don’t want to go down the same path as France – a situation I warned my colleagues of many years ago (only to be met with media and parliamentary derision) – we need to take immediate action’ – including reconsidering support for the UNHCR and banning the burqa (Bernardi 2017). For liberal Australians, on the other hand, the European dystopia is the rise of the far right and the decline of tolerance. This serves as a warning but also as a reassuring counterpoint against which Australian racism seems comparatively benign. Muslims living in Australia fear that measures such as the hijab ban in French schools might eventually find a place in Australia.

Clothing regulation and fearmongering Contemporary regulation of religious clothing by the French authorities echoes the de-veiling campaigns in colonial Algeria, where in an aim to ‘civilise’ the Algerians, the French colonisers 266

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sought to forcibly ‘free’ colonised women from their veils. For immigrants from the former colonies laïcité then shifted from its established role as an instrument to restrain the power of the Catholic church to a weapon with which to control the problem population of Maghrebi immigrants. The concept has been used to justify the ban on wearing visible religious symbols since the 1989 incident known as l’affaire du foulard (the headscarf affair) in which three schoolgirls were expelled from their lycée (middle school) after they refused to remove their headscarves when instructed to do so (Bloul 1994). Like the burkini debacle of 2016, the 1989 debates were initiated and dominated by men, with very limited female participation (ibid.). The debate reoccurred periodically: in 1994 another headscarf-wearing incident; in 2003 when the Stasi commission into laïcité recommended that religious symbols be banned from schools; in 2004 the recommendation became law. The face veil became a hot topic in Sarkozy’s presidency where the former French President, speaking to both houses of parliament in 2009, stated that the burqa is not only ‘symbol of subjugation’ that ‘is not welcome in the territory of the republic’ but also ‘not a religious symbol’ (Le Point 2009) while at the same time saying that the issue of the burqa is not religious but an issue of female disempowerment and the solution was the doctrine of laïcité. He then appointed a commission into face veils, known as the Gérin report (Selby 2011, p. 385), which included some 221 testimonies, none of which were from women who wore face-veils or the burqa (ibid., p. 387). This report was the precursor and an added justifier (on top of security reasons) of the 2010 anti-face covering law. Not only must Muslim women have their dress codes dictated by the state in schools, but now in public spaces more generally. So, the burkini ban on the beach comes within a trajectory of politicians using religious dress to justify discriminatory laws in the name of liberation, and attract media attention along the way. Contrary to its original inclusionary intention of bridging a divided France through laïcité and l’école laïque, the anti-headscarf law emerging in an Islamophobic post-9/11 context, is exclusionary (Atkan 2009) which at its worst prevents Muslim girls and young women from accessing education. Furthermore, it paved the way for the anti-face coverings (in public spaces) law of 2010, which was directed at the face-veil, though by this stage this was passed in the name of security. The previous debates around laïcité just enhanced the securitised turn. The securitised discourse surrounded the recent history of bombings on French soil, starting in the 1970s, were linked in a general way to ‘Arabs’ inspired by ‘Middle Eastern’ issues rather than North African ones. The combination of securitising discourse and Islam has only been enhanced by the post 9/11 global surge in Islamophobia. As French politicians continued to argue that gender oppression is exemplified by the visible and easily tangible element of the veil, the aforementioned Stasi commission detailed ‘the Islamic veil is a sign of the alienation of women’ (Gökarıksel and Mitchell 2005, p. 156). To debate the accommodation of Islam is, then, a strong case of symbolic politics, a convenient means of distracting attention from more serious problems, such as unwelcome economic cuts (Silvestri 2010), or a kind of replacement issue (Terray 2004) which relates to the idea of values being threatened that must supposedly be defended against an internal enemy. As Brown points out, the concept of secularism undergirding the promulgation of tolerance within multicultural liberal democracies not only legitimates their intolerance, but also glosses over the ways in which certain cultures and religions are marked in advance as ineligible for tolerance, while others are so hegemonic as not even to register as cultures or religions (Brown 2008). The second element is related to the fact that attempts to ban the full veil can be viewed in the context of a trend towards the culturalisation of citizenship (Moors 2012). Like the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada (with the exception of Quebec), Australia has not attempted to regulate Muslim women’s dress in public space. (Courts in Western Australia and New South Wales have ordered women to remove their face-veils when 267

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giving evidence). However, while legislative measures have not been imposed, Muslim women in Australia find themselves disciplined into conformity with hegemonic norms by routine incidents of discrimination and harassment, fueled by high-profile public scare-mongering. Rightwing politicians such as Jacquie Lambie and Pauline Hanson have called Australia to follow France’s lead by regulating and/or prohibiting certain forms of Muslim dress. Eventually in 2014, after a campaign led by Cory Bernardi, the Speaker Bronwyn Bishop attempted farcically to ban or segregate visitors wearing face-coverings from the public gallery of parliament. Anti-hijab rhetoric from such politicians validated the abuse and harassment of visibly Muslim women by those seeking to ‘liberate’ them. Women often perceived these fearful events as a stage in a process that would lead to French-style bans of hijab in public spaces. Islamophobia in Australia has not passed without notice in France. In 2014, the centre-left newspaper Libération published a report headlined ‘L’islamophobie se porte bien en Australie’ (‘Islamophobia is doing well in Australia’). The report discussed events such as the short-lived ban on burqas in Parliament as well as the spike in assaults upon visibly Muslim women and the founding of an anti-Muslim political party, concluding that ‘[t]he country is in the grip of strong tensions’ (Cheffouf 2014). In 2017, a Le Monde report headlined ‘Marine Le Pen has an emulator in Australia’ described Hanson as being ‘as red(haired) as Marine Le Pen is blonde’, further amplifying that the One Nation leader ‘of the far-right party . . . embodies the Australian version of this rise of populism observed in so many Western democracies’ (Le Monde 2017). Hanson’s burqa-clad appearance in Parliament a few months later was described by the daily newspaper 20 Minutes as being in ‘mauvais gout’ (bad taste), while Hanson was described by Libération as a ‘fervent anti-burqa activist’ and by Yahoo French News as the ‘local Marine Le Pen’ in Australia (Yahoo 2017; see also Le Monde 2017). Similarly, reports in Australia of Hanson being compared to Le Pen are not uncommon (see, for example, Age 2017).

Modest fashion, social inclusion and antiracism As Reina Lewis observes, ‘it feels as if modest dressing is all over media, but on the news pages, not the fashion pages’ (Lewis 2015, p. 2597). The most prominent element of this coverage is fear-mongering commentaries in which (Muslim) modest fashion is described as a threat to established gender norms and social order. However, ‘modest fashion’ has also become a key site for the rearticulation of positive female Muslim identity within mainstream media discourse in Australia, where Muslim communities have responded to Islamophobic attitudes towards the hijab by hosting fashion shows (often supported by state or federal funding). For example in 2002, several local media published articles on a youth-led fashion parade in a Melbourne suburb held to ‘dispel myths about Islam’: A fashion parade is not normally about much more than what’s on the surface. But a parade to be held in Moreland on Wednesday aims to avoid the usual trap of first impressions and go behind the image. Meadow Heights student Alanur Aydemir, 21, will wear a favourite skirt and top with a baby blue hajib [sic] (head scarf) at the all-women event in Brunswick. (Moreland Sentinel 2002) The travelling fashion event ‘My Dress, My Image, My Choice’ toured various Australian locations from 2005 to 2012 and paraded ‘Muslim fashions’ for a non-Muslim audience. The initiative, partly funded by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, was developed in response to post 9/11 ‘acts of intolerance’ towards Muslim women in Australia. 268

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Reporting on ‘My Dress, My Image, My Choice’ increased after the unveiling of the ‘burkini’ in November 2006. The notion of fashion as a cultural bridge was equally noticed by, and disseminated in, the media from the beginning (via ‘My Dress, My Image, My Choice’) in Melbourne in 2005 until the event was ‘taken over’ by The Powerhouse Museum’s Faith, Fashion, Fusion in 2012. Often reported on in attempts by Muslim women to ‘lift the mysticism surrounding veils and headscarves’, the event was seen as a tool to use fashion as a bridge to mainstream Australia. Even though the notion of ‘modest fashion’ was discussed in these early reports it was not used to describe a specific social and cultural movement, but still within the framework of ‘Islam’ and ‘us’. For example, in 2008 the term appeared in the headline ‘Islam makes modest inroad in fashion’ published on 26 November 2008 in The Age. ‘Modest fashion’ was a term used to describe the same exoticised ‘Other’ of previous incarnations of mainstream media discourse about Muslim women. Only with the figure of the ‘hip hijabi’ did representations of Muslim women shift to a new discursive register. The burkini entered the market at a time when Muslim women were facing increasing hostility for the visible difference they displayed in their clothes – difference all too often interpreted as a sign of backwardness, lack of integration, foreignness and extremism (Tarlo 2016; Minganti 2013). As noted in related in numerous media profiles, Lebanese-born Australian designer Aheda Zanetti was prompted to make her initial foray into Islamic sportswear in order to produce suitable sports attire for her niece, who was encumbered by the long-sleeved skivvy, tracksuit pants and headscarf that was the only available modest option for her to wear while playing netball. After positive local response to her ‘hijood’, Zanetti’s next venture was to design a high-quality modest swimsuit and market it under a catchy brand name – the burkini – a portmanteau combination of ‘bikini’ and ‘burqa’. Muslim women participating in swimming had been subjected to a scare campaign generated by high-profile talkback radio host Alan Jones in 2001 after he discovered that Auburn Swimming Pool (a council-run facility in a suburb of Sydney with a large Muslim population) had been holding women-only sessions for one hour a day for ten days during midwinter in order to allow female students from Nour al Houda Islamic College to have swimming lessons. Jones found this news to be incongruous to the point of bizarre, describing a scene in which ‘they go there and dive in in all their clobber’ (ABC 2002). As the ABC’s Mediawatch television show noted in a segment titled ‘Drowning in Hate’, ‘the girls from Nour Al Houda Islamic College wore swimmers, not “clobber”’ during their swimming lessons, but the indent highlighted both the desire for Muslim women and girls to participate in swimming and the need for appropriate attire. Zanetti’s goal in designing and marketing the burkini was to build Muslim women’s confidence through clothing, and encourage wider participation in sports – in this case by producing comfortable, attractive, practical, covered swimwear using appropriate lightweight, flexible, UV-protected, chlorine-resistant fabrics. Zanetti was (and remains) an articulate media spokesperson for her product and the ethos that it represents. Although Zanetti’s company has trademarked the name (under both spellings) and her website states that ‘the brand must not be used in connection with another manufacturer’s products’, it has entered the global vocabulary as a generic term for modest swimwear. Zanetti’s chosen brand name may have significantly enhanced her product’s success, but also contributed to the level of angst directed towards it. Although the garment itself does not resemble a burqa (in the form of either the Afghan-style shuttlecock burqa which attracted headlines as a symbol of Taliban oppression or the niqab-style face-veil as used in French discourse), the name itself is taken as a signifier of extremism rather than as light-hearted word-play. Despite the significant amount of positive media coverage given to the burkini and its creator, the topic of Muslim women and swimming has continued to be subjected to 269

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scaremongering in Australia. Maree Pardy describes Muslim women as having been assigned ‘the curious symbolic role of cultural creep’ during a 2010 incident when the Victorian Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal (VCAT) granted an exemption from the Equal Opportunity Act in order to allow an outer Melbourne suburban council to host a Ramadan celebration at the local swimming pool at which all participants over the age of ten would be required to wear clothing that concealed their bodies as far as the knees and elbows (Pardy 2016). A similar furore ensued in 2017 when Cumberland council in western Sydney installed privacy curtains at once of the five pools in its aquatic centre during its twice-weekly women’s only swim sessions, which contrary to media reports were not exclusive to Muslim women (Winsor 2017). As well as their established role in multicultural governance, the burkini and modest fashion in general are increasingly cited as valuable commodities in terms of international trade and commerce. The much-derided DFAT announcement of the launch of the ‘Faith, Fusion, Fashion’ exhibition in Malaysia cited ‘the obvious economic benefits’ of the event, given that the modest fashion market was forecast to reach US$368 billion by 2025 (Cue 2018). The economic rationale drew support from some figures on the right, with the newsletter of the libertarian Centre for Independent Studies think-tank publishing an article by Peter Kurti, which stated: When an Aussie fashion designer shows Muslim women how they can be both contemporary and modest, we should embrace it as part of our open multicultural society – and promote it. After all, the DFAT exhibition was destined for Kuala Lumpur and not Klosters. Muslim women in Malaysia are going to buy their clothes from somewhere: why not encourage it to be from Australia? (Kurti 2018) And DFAT’s decision to promote Australian modest fashion in South East Asia is a routine market undertaking, given that as Shirazi (2016, p. 185) notes, the market for modest swimwear has been saturated by more affordable imports from China.

Burkini ban and response Although news of the burkini ban on several French beaches made headlines globally for more than a month, the ban did not spark outrage among the mainstream (white) nonMuslim French population. The local mayors who initiated the bans in the southern French towns on the grounds that it ‘was the uniform of extremist Islamism’, a threat to public order, unhygienic, and violated the principles of laïcité were supported by then Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who stated that the burkini was ‘not compatible with French values’ (Valls in Le Monde 2016a; see also Le Monde 2016b). Given that during a televised debate on popular freeto-air channel France 2 in January 2017, Valls had referred to the bare-breasted ‘Marianne’, symbol of the French republic: ‘that is what France is’ – and not a woman in a headscarf, he could have been expected to regard the iconic bare-breasted Marianne as more appropriate to French beaches than a woman in a burkini could ever hope to be (France 2 2017). His political opponent former President Sarkozy promised to make the burkini unconstitutional if he were re-elected. Given the strong association between the burkini and Australia, it is unsurprising that Australia media outlets published a large volume of reports about the ban, with 103 reports published by the Australian media on the various bans compared to 287 in the UK, 76 in Canada and 77 in the US. In her study of international coverage of the burkini ban in France, Melodie Sommier (2016) found that newspaper articles published in Canada, the United States, 270

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the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland represented France as the ‘deviant other’ for its failure to uphold liberal values. Similarly, the Australian media published numerous reports in which France was represented as not measuring up to the liberal example set by Australia. Ironically, media outlets with a track record of Islamophobic reporting on this occasion came to the defence of an innovative Australian product. This was epitomised by a Daily Mail report headlined ‘Meanwhile in Australia: Muslim mum wears a burkini as she teaches her kids to swim in a Sydney pool – as police force a woman to remove her head to toe bathing suit in France’, which juxtaposed a photograph of a burkini-clad Australian ‘Muslim mum’ and her children with the notorious photograph of the confrontation between armed police and a covered woman on the beach in Nice (Tolj 2016). Similarly, an editorial published in The Australian (2016) newspaper under the headline ‘Burkini ban a step too far’ described the demonisation of the burkini in France as being ‘a far cry from the swimsuit’s beginnings, not amid the medieval obscurantism of the so-called Islamic caliphate but on the beaches of Sydney, where it has been worn for years by swimmers and lifeguards doing club duty’. However, the editorial also noted that French sensitivity was ‘understandable’ given the trauma of the recent terrorist attacks and concluded by suggesting that in order to be ‘cautious’, Muslim women might like to choose ‘those other common Australian outfits’ of a pair of board shorts teamed with a rashie (Australian 2016). Elsewhere in the same newspaper, commentator Jennifer Oriel, claimed that there was no ‘compelling security rationale’ that would justify forcing the woman on the beach to disrobe but nonetheless asserted that there was ‘no place for a symbol [like the burkini] so at odds with a freethinking Western society’. In Oriel’s opinion, most Australian commentators had been overly sympathetic to this reviled symbol, depicting ‘[t]he burkini-clad woman as a victim of muscular secularism’ (Oriel 2016). The most high-profile Australian coverage of the French burkini ban was a television report screened on Channel 7’s Sunday Night show. The previous year, the same program had aired what was billed as an ‘expose’ of the far-right Reclaim Australia movement. Editorials in subsequent days castigated the show for providing the extremist movement with a platform in its first ever television interview (Burke 2015; Dye 2015). The program’s coverage of the burkini ban featured a segment in which an Australian Muslim medical student travelled to France with her parents because ‘she decided that she could no longer sit by and watch what was happening in France’. Zaynab Alshelh compared France unfavourably with Australia, and described the burkini as being ‘as Australian as you can get’. The report showed Alshelh adopting similar techniques of transversal enabling during her encounter in France to those widely undertaken during the process of postCronulla reconciliation: ‘It’s important to educate people that most Muslims are decent human beings, not terrorists. I’m Muslim, but I’m also a regular girl who goes to uni, plays netball and has a family.’ Although no ban was in force on in Villeneuve-Loubet at the time when the report was filmed, the program nonetheless screened footage in which the Alshelh and her mother were apparently threated and abused until they eventually left the beach. This footage was reported by international media outlets including the BBC and CNN. The Mayor of Villeneuve-Loubet told L’Express that ‘She [Alshelh] cannot come innocently on our beaches like that with the religious habit that is a sign of the fundamentalism that battered us.’ However, the French newspaper Nice-Matin alleged that the report was misleading, claiming the Channel 7 had made use of hidden cameras and selective editing and that the French beachgoers had objected to having their families filmed, not to the women’s burkinis. In an article for The Australian headlined ‘Seven and its burkini family owe France an apology’, Emma Kate Symon described Alshelh as ‘flaunting her burkini in an obvious attempt to bait Gallic sun-lovers into religious and 271

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ethnically motivated hatred’ and suggested that ‘perhaps the trainee doctor could use hidden camera techniques in Egypt on doctors practicing illegal female genital mutilation on the vast majority of little girls’ (Symon 2017). Rather than taking steps to address their own ingrained Islamophobia, then, Australian media outlets have found it easier to focus on Islamophobic practices and incidents overseas.

Conclusion The discourse around the burkini in Australia and France illustrates the two societies’ differing experiences of colonialism, secularism and immigration as well as their contrasting attitudes and policies towards multicultural governance. It also demonstrates Islamophobia’s capacity to operate at both a global and a local level, travelling across borders and adapting itself to the microclimate of its new environment. From shock-jock fired moral panics about a local swimming pool in Sydney to the beaches of Nice amid populist political posturing around national elections in France, the ideological elements of Islamophobia are globally circulated, recycled and redeployed. Little can illustrate the insidiousness and pervasiveness of this ideology better than the example illustrated here, of the turning of a costume designed for participation and inclusiveness of Muslim women in the national culture into yet another symbol of their supposed self-segregation and unacceptable otherness.

Notes 1 Among them John Pilger, whose A Secret Country (1990) has Max Dupain’s iconic photograph, ‘The Sunbaker’, on the cover and as a centre plate. 2 See www.maxdupain.com.au. 3 www.maxdupain.com.au/product/nuns-newport-beach-1960.

Acknowledgement Our thanks to Dr Rachel Bloul for providing valuable feedback on the draft of this paper.

References 20 Minutes. 2018. Australie: Qui est la sénatrice d’extrême-droite qui est arrivée en burqa au Parlement?. Retrieved on 17 April 2018 from www.20minutes.fr/monde/2118235-20170817-australie-senatriceextreme-droite-arrivee-burqa-parlement. Age. 2017. Trump, Le Pen, Hanson and other cynical politicians are exploiting inequality. The Age, 19 January. Retrieved on 17 April 2018 from www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/trump-le-penhanson-and-other-cynical-politicians-are-exploiting-inequality-20170119-gtuhrg.html. Agerholm, H. 2017. Burkini ban: Geneva says women must bare arms and legs. The Independent, 17 December. Arslan, L. 2015. Islam and Laïcité in France. In M. Burchardt and I. Michalowski (eds), After Integration, pp. 187–204. Wiesbaden: Springer. Atkan, M., 2009. Laïcité and multiculturalism: The Stasi report in context. The British Journal of Sociology, 60(2), 237–256. Australian. 2016. Burkini ban a step too far. The Australian, 30 August. Australian. 2018. Modest? More like medieval, The Australian, 31 January. Retrieved on 1 June 2018 from www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/.../ed4ab407b748b0be34e25e1934de43c2. Bernardi, C. 2017. Curing the sickness that has captured society. Retrieved from www.corybernardi.com/ curing_the_sickness_that_has_captured_society. Bloul, R. 1994. Veiled objects of (post)-colonial desire: forbidden women disrupt the republican fraternal space. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 5(3), 113–123. 272

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Brown, W. 2008. Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Burke, L. 2015. Reclaim Australia expose backfires for Channel 7. 19 October. Retrieved from www. news.com.au/entertainment/tv/reclaim-australia-expose-backfires-for-channel-seven/news-story/316 25a8347ec8ffbc4f899bcd773e286 Cheffouf, A. 2014. L’islamophobie se porte bien en Australie. Retrieved from www.liberation.fr/ planete/2014/10/29/l-islamophobie-s-exporte-bien-en-australie_1131050. Cue, P. 2018. Fashion Diplomacy in Action: Showcasing Australian ‘modest fashion’ in Malaysia. 22 January. Retrieved from https://blog.dfat.gov.au/2018/01/22/fashion-diplomacy-in-actionshowcasing-australian-modest-fashion-in-malaysia. Drewe, R., 2015. The Beach: An Australian Passion. Canberra: National Library of Australia. Dye, J., 2015. Founders of ‘anti-Islamic’ group Reclaim Australia make first television appearance on Channel Seven’s Sunday Night. Sydney Morning Herald, 18 October. Retrieved on 2 June 2018 from www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/founders-of-antiislamic-group-reclaimaustralia-make-first-television-appearance-on-channel-sevens-sunday-night-20151018-gkc5vk. html. Fitzgerald, J and Giles, C. n.d. Embracing cultural diversity within Surf Lifesaving Australia. World Conference on Drowning Prevention. Retrieved from https://ilsf.org/drowning-prevention/library/ embracing-cultural-diversity-within-surf-life-saving-australia. France 2. 2017. Débat sur le port du voile entre Manuel Valls et Attika Trabelsi. Union des Démocrates Musulmans Français Officiel. 6 January. Retrieved on 9 February 2018 from www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ow0QeLF3hbQ. Fuggle, S. 2016. Brigitte Bardot vs. the Burkini. Foreign Policy, 28 August. Retrieved on 19 April 2018 from http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/23/brigitte-bardot-vs-the-burkini-france-burqini-ban. Gökarıksel, B. and Mitchell, K. 2005. Veiling, secularism, and the neoliberal subject: national narratives and supranational desires in Turkey and France. Global Networks, 5(2): 147–165. Hussein, S. and Poynting, S. 2017. ‘We’re not multicultural, but . . .’. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 38(3), 333–348. Khamis, S. 2010. Braving the Burquini: rebranding the Australian beach. Cultural Geographies, 17, 3. Kurti, P. 2018. Modest bid for Muslim trade. Centre for Independent Studies, 9 February. Retrieved on 2 June 2018 from www.cis.org.au/commentary/articles/pk-article. Le Monde. 2016a. Manuel Valls « soutient » les maires ayant interdit le «burkini». 17 August. Retrieved 17 April 2018 from www.lemonde.fr/religions/article/2016/08/17/manuel-valls-soutient-les-mairesayant-interdit-le-burkini_4983667_1653130.html. Le Monde. 2016b. Après la décision du Conseil d’Etat, Manuel Valls continue de dénoncer le «burkini». 26 August. Retrieved on 17 April 2018 from www.lemonde.fr/port-du-voile/article/2016/08/26/apresla-decision-du-conseil-d-etat-manuel-valls-continue-de-denoncer-le-burkini_4988646_4987696. html. Le Monde. 2017. Marine Le Pen fait une émule en Australie. Retrieved on 17 April 2018 from www.lemonde.fr/m-moyen-format/article/2017/04/25/marine-le-pen-fait-une-emule-enaustralie_5116897_4497271.html. Le Point. 2009. Nicolas Sarkozy au congres de Versailles – La Burqa. Retrieved on 17 April 2018 from www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbzdpKi_TSY. Lewis, R., 2015. Fashion, shame and pride: constructing the modest fashion industry in three faiths. The Changing World Religion Map (pp. 2597–2609). Berlin: Springer. Minganti, P. K. 2013. Burqinis, bikinis and bodies: Encounters in public pools in Italy and Sweden. Retrieved from www.su.se/polopoly_fs/1.309614.1480494950!/menu/standard/file/Karlsson%20 Minganti%20Burqinis%20Bikinis%20and%20Bodies%20in%20Islamic%20Fashion%20and%20AntiFashion.pdf. Moors, A. 2012. Popularizing Islam: Muslims and materiality – introduction. Material Religion, 8(3), 272–279. Moreland Sentinel. 2002. Fashion show set to dispel Islam myths. Moreland Sentinel, 4 March. Oriel, J. 2016. Burkini represents religious fundamentalism writ large. The Australian, 29 August. Pardy, M. 2017. Eat, swim, pray. Retrieved from http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/ mcjournal/article/view/406. Pilger, J. 1990. A Secret Country. Poynting, S., 2006. ‘What caused the Cronulla Riot?’ Race and Class, 48(1), 85–92. 273

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Selby, J. A. 2011. Islam in France reconfigured: republican Islam in the 2010 Gerin report. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 31(3), 383–398. Shirazi, F. 2016. Brand Islam: the marketing and commodification of piety University of Texas Press. Silvestri, S. 2010. Comparing burqa debates in Europe: Sartorial styles, religious prescriptions and political ideologies. In S. Ferrari and S. Pastorelli (eds), Religion in Public Spaces: A European Perspective. Ashgate: Farnham. pp. 275–292. Symon, E. K. 2017. Seven and its burkini family owe France an apology. The Australian. Tarlo, E. 2016. Jewish wigs and Islamic sportswear: Negotiating regulations of religion and fashion. Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, 7(1), 69–87. Terray, E. 2004. La Question du Voile: une Hystérie Politique. Mouvements, 2(32), 96–104. Tolj, B. 2016. Meanwhile, in Australia . . . Retrieved from www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3757352/ Muslim-mum-wears-burkini-teaches-kids-swim-Sydney-pool-French-police-crack-Nice-beach.html. Waverley Library. 2009. Bikini arrests on Bondi Beach: 1940s–1960s’. Retrieved 19 April 2018 from www. waverley.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/8666/Bikini_arrests_on_Bondi_Beach,_1940s_ to_1960s.pdf. Winsor, B. 2017. Highly misleading: the real story behind reports of ‘Muslim women’ swim sessions. SBS, 27 December. Retrieved from www.sbs.com.au/news/highly-misleading-the-realstory-behind-reports-of-muslim-women-pool-sessions. Yahoo. 2017. En Australie, la Marine Le Pen locale en burqa au Sénat. Retrieved on 17 April 2018 from https://fr.news.yahoo.com/en-australie-la-marine-le-pen-locale-en-063334636.html.

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22 Breaking the peace The Quebec City terrorist attack Barbara Perry

Introduction The majority of Canadians were no doubt shocked to hear on 29 January 2017 that a lone gunmen entered the Islamic Centre of Quebec in a suburb of Quebec City, Quebec, intent on killing Muslims. And he did. He opened fire with his long gun, murdering six Muslim men and injuring 19 others while they prayed in the Centre (Perreaux and Freeze 2017). By all accounts, he only quit shooting when he ran out of ammunition. The shooter was described by his friends as a moderate conservative who, over the past year, had become an apparent xenophobe and racist, one who overtly supported Donald Trump and far-right French politician Marine Le Pen (Dougherty 2017). In other circles, he was described as an extremist troll who frequently posted alt-right rhetoric on the Web (McKenna 2017). From these descriptions, it seems apparent that his violence was not random; nor was the time of his attack insignificant, coming as it did fast on the heels of Donald Trump’s inauguration as President of the United States. In light of Trump’s virulent Islamophobia and apparent fear of “Islamic terrorism”, it is tragically ironic that the first act of terrorism in North America after his election was perpetrated by one of his “fans” against their shared targets of opprobrium. While such extremist violence is not something to which Canadians are accustomed, it is nonetheless possible to make some sense of how and why Quebec came to be the site of such a tragic event. A perfect storm of global, national, and provincial patterns conditioned an environment in which Islamophobia could grow to murderous proportions. In this chapter, I will unpack the ways in which global and “home-grown” xenophobia and anti-Muslim hatred coalesced to provide the climate for the elevated rates of anti-Muslim violence that culminated in the deaths of six men of peace. I examine, first, how Trump’s campaign rhetoric and subsequent policy directives have provided one level of influence. I follow that with consideration of the ways in which conservative politics at the national level in Canada and provincial level in Quebec provided fertile ground for his xenophobia and Islamophobia to take root here. The manifestations of culturally embedded Islamophobia are revealed in consistently negative polling around Islam, and high – and increasing – rates of anti-Muslim hate crime. Unexpectedly, I end the paper with cause for optimism. The impact of the Quebec shootings among diverse communities and among many political leaders has been to direct attention and resources to reversing the tide of hate. 275

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The Trump effect It is no coincidence that the explicitly anti-Muslim attack occurred shortly after Trump’s inauguration, and on the weekend that he imposed the entry ban on those arriving from seven “majority Muslim” nations. Almost from the outset of his campaign for leadership of the Republican party, Trump promoted a populist agenda shaped by misogyny, xenophobia, nativism, and anti-elitism. Arguably, however, he placed Islamophobia at centre stage. It became clear early on that this approach struck a chord with embattled and embittered elements of the nation, particularly white men who perceived a recent loss of privilege (Inglehart and Norris 2016). In a synergistic loop, Trump fed off the Islamophobia that he himself helped to exacerbate. Up to and even after his shocking victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump relied on political and policy discourse that separated “us” from “them”. By the time of the election, he had appeared to whip up such a fervour of anti-Muslim hatred that Islamophobic attacks were widespread across the US. It is also important to note that Trump was not alone in his disparagement of Islam. His position was in fact strengthened by his opponents during the party leadership campaign. Giroux (2017, p. 31) summarizes a litany of anti-Muslim proposals, by which candidates attempted to outdo one another in their Islamophobic fervour: Ben Carson announced that no Muslim should be allowed to assume the presidency. Jeb Bush refined this religious test by insisting that only Syrian Christian refugees and orphans fleeing from ISIS should be admitted to the United States. Marco Rubio has said that not only would he consider shutting down mosques, as would Trump, but that he wants to shut down “any place where radicals are being inspired”. Before he dropped out of the presidential race, Scott Walker said that only a handful of Muslims were moderates. Cumulatively, these proscriptions created an environment in which Islamophobia was not just tolerated, but in fact promoted, opening up spaces for public expressions and performances of hatred and contempt. It did not take Donald Trump long to capitalize on the apparent support for his especially toxic brand of hatred. Inaugurated on 20 January, on 27 January he imposed the first of what would be several attempts to ban travelers from Muslim-majority countries. Widely seen as a targeted assault on the mobility of Muslims specifically, it was his first official policy to institutionalize Islamophobia. It is no mere coincidence that the murder of six Muslim men at prayer occurred just two days later. The shooter was allegedly an ardent follower of Trump, as well as France’s Marine Le Pen. His online activity indicates support for their anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy prpoosals. It is also telling that, first Trump offered no words of condolence for the murders, and second, that the only statement to come from the White House – from Sean Spicer – inexplicably used the attack to justify the ban. For Canadians, it was shocking that this deadliest North American act of anti-Muslim violence occurred in Canada. It was taken as evidence that normalized hatred had settled in not just in the US, but in Canada as well.

State hate Porous borders are part of the explanation for the apparent upswing in Islamophobia in Canada. As consumers of American media, and as users of globalized social media platforms, we have been fed the same steady diet of Trump’s hyperbole. His Twitter feeds reach us; his sound bites have made front-page news in the Toronto Star and Globe and Mail; the Alt-right forums are 276

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accessible – and emulated – here. In short, hate that has flooded across the border to infect public discourse in Canada. Moreover, Trump’s political rhetoric of hate does not fall on deaf ears. Consider Gramsci’s (1971, pp. 181–182) assertion that the appeal of any rhetorical formation depends upon “previously germinated ideologies . . . [which] come into confrontation and conflict, until only one of them, or at least a single combination of them, tends to prevail”. Trump’s appeal to “the people” finds fertile ground in Canada. Neither the populism nor nationalism that allowed Trump’s victory are foreign to Canada. We must also look inwards to account for the ready uptake of “Trumpism” among an albeit small contingent of Canadians. His discursive and practical assaults merged with political strains of Islamophobia that had already emerged in Canada at the national level, and significantly, within Quebec specifically. First, at the federal level Stephen Harper’s Conservative administration ushered in a turn to the right unlike any we have seen since at least the early 1900s. It is important to note that Harper emerged out of the Reform party, which had been modeled on the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party – akin to the Tea Party. The indicators of Harper as precursor to Trump are many and varied. Anti-democratic and anti-immigrant rhetoric and practice, and a retreat from the discourse of rights, for example, meant that Harper’s politics of fear mongering created spaces where it became acceptable to hate. Rhetorically, Harper became especially notorious for his vilification of Muslims, claiming that “Islamism” is the greatest threat to the West. After the “terrorist” attacks in Quebec and on Parliament Hill in 2014, Harper exploited the opportunity for fear-mongering, introducing Bill C-51 with the claim that Violent jihadism is not just a danger somewhere else. It seeks to harm us here in Canada . . . through horrific acts like deliberately driving a car at a defenceless man, or shooting a soldier in the back as he stands guard at a War Memorial . . . They want to harm us because they hate our society and the values it represents. During his last election campaign, Harper ratcheted up his xenophobia, pandering to our basest prejudices, which he deemed good campaign strategy. It was during that campaign, for example, that Harper called the wearing of hijab “offensive”, and said: We do not allow people to cover their faces during citizenship ceremonies. Why would Canadians, contrary to our own values, embrace a practice at that time that is not transparent, that is not open and frankly is rooted in a culture that is anti-women. Harper’s rhetoric was matched by his regressive social policy regime. His administration ushered in the shrinking of funding for human rights groups, the elimination of S. 13 hate speech protections, expanded surveillance powers, and increasing restrictions on immigrants and refugees (Mallea 2001; McDonald 2011). Consider the following sample of Harper’s policy initiatives targeting Muslims specifically: • • • •

Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act (2015) – allows revocation of Canadian citizenship of those born outside Canada, or holding dual citizenship without judicial oversight for “national security” reasons. Bill C51 (2015) – extension of police powers. Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act (2015). Oath of Citizenship Act (2015) – introduced at nearly same time as Quebec introduced Bill 62 (Religious Neutrality Act), both of which were intended to constrain religious observance. 277

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Cumulatively, these strategies mapped out an agenda that seemed to hit a chord with Canadian voters. It coalesced into a populist movement with fear-mongering at its core (Chwalisz 2015; Prince 2015). The 2016/2017 race for the leadership of the Conservative party following Harper’s electoral defeat in 2015 saw Kellie Leitch poised to take on Harper’s mantle. Prior to the leadership race, while campaigning for her local seat – and while serving as Status of Women Minister – it was Leitch that announced the intent to create a tip line for reporting “barbaric cultural practices”. Early on in her leadership campaign she distributed a survey among her supporters asking “Should the Canadian government screen potential immigrants for anti-Canadian values as part of its normal screening for refugees and landed immigrants?” The space opened up by this question would become a defining issue for the race. Despite harsh criticism, she did not back down from this position. In fact, she defended it stating Screening potential immigrants for anti-Canadian values that include intolerance towards other religions, cultures and sexual orientations, violent and/or misogynist behaviour and/or a lack of acceptance of our Canadian tradition of personal and economic freedoms is a policy proposal that I feel very strongly about. (CBC News 2016) Ironically, while Leitch has not explicitly stated what is meant by “Canadian values”, she has implied that “tolerance” is one such value – a sentiment that is belied by her positions. Emboldened by Trump’s success to the south, she appeared to “double-down” and in fact increase the intensity of her rhetoric during and immediately after his election. Interestingly, in the immediate aftermath of the mosque murders, a banner was unfurled outside of Leitch’s Collingwood, Ontario, office which read in part “hate puts us all at risk” (Toronto Star 2017a). Also calling for her resignation, the banner clearly suggests that her rhetoric formed part of the landscape that enables Islamophobic violence. At the provincial level, Quebec has long been the “epicentre” for institutional challenges to Muslim identity. There is a lengthening history in that province that would restrict Muslim markers of identity. Beginning in the mid-1990s, there was considerable controversy around schools – and even the province’s largest teacher’s union – barring women and girls from wearing the hijab in school. The Reasonable Accommodation debates – some would say crisis – of the mid-2000s exacerbated the trend, such that many French speaking Quebecers feared that recognition of minority cultures had “gone too far” (Allan 2014, p. 17). Such targeted restrictions reached their zenith under then Premier Pauline Marois, who exploited the anxiety expressed among Quebecers. She first proposed her Charter of Values (originally Charter of Secularism) in 2012. The provision would have banned the wearing or display of religious symbols among public sector institutions. That the Christian crucifix would nonetheless still be allowed in public buildings highlights the selective nature of the proposal. The rhetoric surrounding the Charter was “dressed in the guise of narratives of gender equality and secular values” (Ameli and Merali 2014, p. 39). It would also claim to underpin “religious neutrality” while nonetheless “making allowance, if applicable, for the emblematic and toponymic elements of Québec’s cultural heritage that testify to its history”. As Goldman (2015, p. 55) observes: The Charter thus demonstrates what is considered neutral. Western cultural norms are understood as neutral. Westernized bodies that do not threaten hegemonic whiteness are considered neutral. On the other hand, bodies that physically represent foreign cultures (read: non-white) are posed as offensive and furthermore, punishable. 278

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Far from neutral, it was clear from the outset that the Charter was targeted at Muslims and their “failure” to have assimilated into the “distinct society” that is Quebec. Populist supporters drew on an array of stereotypes of Islam to defend the Charter, focusing especially on veiled Muslim women. Marois claimed that the hijab was an unequivocal symbol of women’s oppression; the Minister for Democratic Institutions argued that the ban was a necessary defence against the “Islamisization of Quebec;” a television commentator said she wouldn’t trust a nurse wearing a headscarf; a popular actor/director stated that women who wore the headscarf were “insane;” and perhaps saddest of all, the former president of the Quebec Women’s Federation stated that she would change lines in order to avoid being served by a covered woman (Mathelet 2015). It is no coincidence that right wing extremist groups informed by cultural nationalism are probably most visible in Quebec. More so than segments of the movement elsewhere in the country, Quebec hate groups define themselves through the lens of culture rather than race per se, and specifically Quebecois culture. Their rhetoric parallels that of Marois, focusing on the “threat” posed to the French language and culture by the increasing presence of immigrants and especially Muslims. A current indicator of this is the appearance in Quebec of a German based Islamophobic group known as Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West (PEGIDA) (Toronto Star 2015). One of the Quebec group’s members told the Toronto Star that, “the incompatibility of Islam with the West is flagrant and that’s the reason that PEGIDA and the Western patriots are rising up. It’s not just to counter Islam but to say that if Islam doesn’t reform itself, Islam needs to get out of the West” (Woods 2015). Such was the immediate environment in which a young white male found permission to lay siege to a mosque during prayer, killing six men. Taking his cues from a broader culture that vilified and Othered Muslims, he sought to violently suppress the “threat” that was so widely identified in Quebec’s political climate. Religious leaders and politicians alike drew the connections between the extant social norms and the killer’s individual actions. The Canadian Council of Imams responded to the attack proclaiming that “Islamophobia has killed innocent Canadians.” MP Michael Chong similarly observed that “This mosque attack is no accident. It’s a direct result of demagogues and wannabe demagogues playing to fears and prejudices” (Kassam 2017). Exacerbating the political climate of Islamophobia are the media, who are also complicit in stoking the noted “fears and prejudices”.

Radio Poubelle Many commentators have suggested that Arabs and Muslims, especially Arab Muslims, may represent the last “legitimate” subjects of slanderous imagery and stereotypes (Said 1997; Amiraux and Araya-Moreno 2014; Bonilla-Silva 2013; Helly and Dubé 2014). The widespread perpetuation of such caricatures – by the media and by public figures in particular – fuels sentiments of suspicion and mistrust by shaping public perceptions in less than favourable ways. Media assessments undertaken by the Canadian Islamic Congress (2004) and other authors (Stockton 1994; Biles and Ibrahim 2002; Morgan and Poynting 2012) consistently reveal such imagery associated with Muslims. There are few, if any, positive images of Muslims, Arabs or Middle Easterners generally. Rather they are portrayed collectively as wholly evil and warlike. Among the potential effects of the tendency to devalue a group or social category is that it contributes to a culture that bestows “permission to hate”, indeed, permission to engage in hate crime. For example, a 2002 report remarked on the “startling similarity between media myths on Islam and Muslims and the hate-text of many documented anti-Muslim incidents” (Khan, Saloojee and Al-Shalchi 2004). In a 2002 nationwide survey of some 300 Canadian Muslims of South Asian, Arab, African and European background, CAIR-CAN found that 55% of respondents thought the Canadian media were more biased since 9/11. Moreover, work by Ismael and 279

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Measor (2003), by Helly and Perry (2016), and by the Canadian Islamic Congress (2002, 2005) all point to the uneven distribution of media bias across news sources. For example, a survey of nine Canadian newspapers by the Canadian Islamic Congress (2005) noted an increase in antiMuslim stereotypes after September 2001. “Negative or biased information on Islam” appeared 10 times more often than in the previous months in the Toronto Star, 18 times more often in The Globe and Mail and 22 times more often in the National Post. All of these authors single out The National Post as especially likely to engage in disparaging and inflammatory coverage of Islam, tending to emphasize extremist “tendencies”. More recently, Navigator Research found that, across Canadian mainstream media, 59% of news articles featuring Muslims were negative in tone. Ismael and Measor (2003) observe that, after 9/11, The blend of the xenophobic fears of the “other”, and that of terrorism, provided media consumers in Canada with a clear path to the conclusion that Islam was a faith in which acts of unspeakable violence were acceptable and that terrorism was endemic to Muslim and Arab culture. This framed Arab and Muslim societies and individuals as somehow fundamentally different from the average Canadian. By refusing to represent the diversity of Islam as a faith, the obfuscation of its tenets, and through their lack of coverage of the articulated ideas of Muslims the world over endorsing peace and supportive of human rights, the media conducted reductive exercises of the highest order. Quebec media have been especially complicit in these negative constructs of Islam. Indeed, following the murders in Quebec City, media have turned the mirror on themselves and their peers, admitting some responsibility for creating a toxic environment that has shaped Islamophobia in that province, what the Toronto Star (2017b) called “an atmosphere of suspicion and hostility toward Muslims”. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also called both politicians and the media to account, remarking during one of the funeral services that “It’s high time those behind these messages – whether they are politicians, radio or TV hosts or other public personalities – realize the harm their words can cause” (Toronto Star 2017c). So entrenched is xenophobia and Islamophobia in Quebec talk radio programming in particular that it has come to be known as radio poubelle, or trash radio. Potvin (2010) traces this to the religious accommodation debates of the mid-2000s, when media pundits led the way in reconstructing the conflict as a “social crisis” so as to polarize the French majority and ethnic and religious minority groups. Playing to notions of “privileges” accruing to minority groups, and the subsequent threat to Quebec values, the media succeeded in demonizing and vilifying Jews and Muslims alike. Islam, in particular was constructed – and misconstructed – as entirely incompatible with Quebec values of secularism, equality, and especially gender equity (Bakali 2015). Potvin’s (2010, p. 81) review of the media (mis)representation of accommodation, for example, found that over half of the media sources assessed highlighted “populist and (neo)racist discursive devices” such as us–them dichotomizaion, over-generalizing, and the promotion of French “victimhood”. Given the breadth of these negative images, it is perhaps not surprising that almost one in five Muslims in Canada believes that most Canadians are hostile towards Muslims, with even higher proportions in Quebec (Environics 2006). And indeed, additional survey evidence would seem to support this.

Popular expressions of xenophobia/Islamophobia in Canada Over the past ten or so years, annual surveys have shown that Canadians “do not feel comfortable” with people associated with Islamic culture. Also consistent has been the trend whereby 280

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these negative valuations are considerably higher in Quebec than other parts of the country. In July 2002, according to a CROP poll of people aged 16 to 35, 76% of Québec respondents and 55% of other Canadian respondents felt that religions are sources of conflict between peoples, and 17% of the former and 13% of the latter felt that Islam fosters conflictual relations (Helly and Perry 2016). Moreover, in August 2002, 45% of Quebecers, 37% of Albertans, 33% of Ontarians and 22% of British Columbian residents agreed with the statement: “The September 11 attacks made me more mistrustful of Arabs or Muslims coming from the Middle East.” By November 2002, a survey by Maclean’s magazine, Global TV and The Ottawa Citizen indicated that 44% of Canadians wanted to see a reduction in immigration from Islamic countries (48% in Québec, 45% in Ontario, 42% in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, 43% in the Maritimes, 39% in British Columbia, and 35% in Alberta). This trend continued in the following years. According to a Sun Media poll in December 2006-January 2007, 51% of Canadian insisted that they were not racist at all, but 47% confessed that they were, and while most Canadians polled held a high opinion of Italian, Asian, Jewish and Black communities, only 53% thought well of Arabs. Moreover, Canadians have a more positive view of Christians and Jews than of Muslims. According to a July 2006 poll by the Association of Canadian Studies, 24% of respondents had a negative view of Muslims (compared with 10% having a negative view of Christians and 9% having a negative view of Jews). Two years later, another poll (Leger Marketing, September 2008) showed that 36% of Canadians had an unfavourable view of Muslims (increasing from 24% in 2006 and 27% in 2007). In April 2009, according to a Canada-wide poll by Angus Reid Strategies, 72% of Canadians had a favourable opinion of Christianity, 57% of Buddhism, 53% of Judaism, 42% of Hinduism, 30% of Sikhism, and only 28% of Islam (17% in Québec) (Helly and Perry 2016). More recent survey results available – from Maclean’s (Geddes 2013) – underscore the persistence of widespread antipathy toward Muslims, finding that 54% of Canadians held an unfavourable view of Islam, up sharply from 46% 2009. To put this in perspective, 39% held an unfavourable opinion of Sikhism; all of the other religions were regarded unfavourably by less than 30% of Canadians. Another indicator of the negative perception of Muslims is that those who found the thought of a son or daughter marrying a Muslim unacceptable rose to 32% from 24%; this attitude was much lower for a child marrying into any of the other religions was considerably lower (Geddes 2013). The 2006 Environics poll sheds some light on the connection between the negative stereotypes described above and public opinion. It found that Canadians who believe that a growing sense of Islamic identity in Canada is bad for the country most often cite perceived poor treatment of women and girls (36%) in Islam as their main worry. An additional three in ten (30%) say that the possibility of violence perpetrated by Muslims is their main worry. These sentiments are confirmed by a 2012 study by Navigator Research, which also found that participants were voiced their beliefs that Islam in Canada was connected to oppression of women, violent extremism, and an unwillingness to integrate into Canadian society. Across studies, there are consistent patterns associated with the demographics of those who hold negative views of Muslims. The Environics (2006) poll highlights this, revealing that educational attainment is positively correlated with perceptions of Muslims, such that those with higher levels of education tend to hold more favourable views of Muslims. Young adults (18–29) are generally more accepting of diversity generally, and Muslims specifically, while those over 60 tend toward the opposite end of the continuum. Religion also has an impact, in that Catholics tend to hold the most negative views of Muslims. This is noteworthy given the high concentration of Catholics in Quebec. It is, then, no coincidence that the sorts of negative perceptions of Muslims noted above are especially elevated in Quebec. 281

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As indicated above, the concerns around the growth of the Muslim population in Quebec has been consistently reflected in myriad public opinion surveys. It is no coincidence that these less than favourable public perceptions coincided with the proclamation of a 2007 Statement of Values in Herouxville, and another in 2011 in Gatineau which would ban religious symbols and attire. Ironically, at that time, there were no Muslims resident in Herouxville. Exclusionary practices such as these local policy responses are accompanied by actions in the streets in the form of anti-Muslim hate crimes.

Anti-Muslim violence There are limited data on anti-Muslim hate crime in Canada, where hate crime data have been officially collected on an annual basis only since 2006. In a 2003 survey of twelve major police forces across Canada, 921 incidents of hate crime were recorded for 2001 and 2002; 57% of these were designated as motivated by race-ethnicity, and 43% by religion (in Silver et al. 2004). More recent data for 2014 by Statistics Canada (Allen 2015) show that hate crimes declined slightly from 2012 to 2014. However the number of police-reported hate crimes targeting Muslim-Canadians more than doubled over this same three-year period. In 2014, police forces across the country recorded 99 religiously motivated hate crimes against Muslims – up from 45 in 2012. That they are over-represented as victims of hate crime is suggested by the finding that Muslims represent 20% of all victims of hate crime motivated by religion, while representing only 3.2% of the population as of 2011 (Allen 2015). Added to this is the fact that 17% of racially motivated hate crimes were perpetrated against South Asians, and Arab/ West Asians – ethno-racial groups typically perceived by the general population as likely to be Muslim. Indeed, approximately 90% of Muslims in Canada are also members of a visible minority group (ibid.): roughly a third of Canadian Muslims are of South Asian background, a third of Arab background and a third of other backgrounds. This ethnic diversity suggests that religion may elide with race/ethnicity in hate crime targeting. Additional evidence of the risk of hate crime confronted by Muslims comes from a number of “unofficial” measures. For example, a survey of Canadian Muslims in 2002 by the Canadian Council on American–Islamic Relations (2002) found that 56% of respondents experienced at least one anti-Muslim incident in the twelve months since 9/11. The Canadian Islamic Congress (2002) noted a 1600% increase in the annual incidence of anti-Muslim hate crime reported to them in 2002, albeit from a low base of 11 cases in the year prior to 9/11. A decade later, in a study among Ontario and Quebec Muslims, Ameli and Merali (2014) found that 11% of respondents had experienced some form of physical assault. In 2013, The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), which has recently replaced CAIR-CAN, established an online hate crime reporting portal for targeted Muslims. The website maintains an ongoing count of such reported incidents (www.nccm.ca/map/#). Since its inception, the monitoring project has recorded dozens of hate motivated incidents ranging from verbal harassment to physical assaults to the destruction of personal and community property. Perry’s (2015a, 2015b) pilot study in Ontario and Quebec offered preliminary insights into the patterns of victimization experienced by Muslims, as well as the subsequent impacts of these. The cumulative results from surveys, interviews and focus groups paint a picture of the nature and dynamics of harassment and violence experienced by Muslims in three cities (Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal) (Perry 2015a, 2015b). They study also explored what these experiences have meant for both individual victims and the broader Muslim community. Hate crimes are message crimes, intended to remind a community – not just direct victims – of their “place” within society. They are threats and actions that, as shown in the study, often render communities fearful and, thus, 282

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hypervigilant. Hate crime can also invoke behavioural changes, wherein group members change their ways of being in the world, from changing patterns and routines, to changing expressions of Muslim identity. Yet on the positive side, such forms of violence can also mobilize individuals and communities against such attempts to silence them (Perry 2015a, 2015b). The very mosque in which the murders occurred had itself been a frequent target of Islamophobic hate crime. Less than a year prior to the murders, a pig’s head was deposited on the front step during Ramadan, with a note that read “bon appetit”. Not long after that, local mailboxes were stuffed with pamphlets describing the mosque as a “hotbed of radicalism”. On a regular basis, graffiti littered the walls outside. Perhaps if local leaders had spoken out against this campaign of harassment earlier, the tragedy of 29 January might have been avoided. One might have thought that the attacks in Quebec City would stall subsequent violence, that the shock of the shootings would be seen as too extreme even for extremists. Instead, the attack was followed by yet another uptick in anti-Muslim – and, ironically, anti-Semitic – violence in Quebec. It was as if the event galvanized or emboldened others into similar action – a call to arms, so to speak. Both law enforcement and community organizations noted a rash of anti-Muslim violence and property damage. In just the first three days after the killings, Montreal saw more than 20 incidents. In one of these, another mosque that had experienced previous incidents of graffiti and vandalism was pelted with eggs.

Sharing the pain There are abiding lessons to be learned from the climate that inspired the murders in Quebec, in particular around public discourses that perpetuate negative perceptions of Muslims and the “Islamic threat”. Sadly, not everyone has taken the lessons to heart. The day after the six men were killed, Premier Couillard acknowledged that Quebec was plagued by the “demons” of “xenophobia, racism, exclusion”. Yet less than eight months later he would sign into law Bill 62 (an Act to foster adherence to State religious neutrality and, in particular, to provide a framework for requests for accommodations on religious grounds in certain bodies), banning the wearing of the niqab when accessing provincial services. And on the day of one of the largest gatherings of a coalition of far-right groups espousing exactly those demons, he had “no comment”. Moreover, the presence and activism of far right Islamophobic hate groups has grown dramatically over the course of 2017, with particular strength in Quebec. The fall of that year was punctuated by large rallies featuring a coalition of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups such as PEGIDA, Storm Alliance and the III%ers. Nonetheless, there is reason for hope. The January shootings were followed by comforting signs of solidarity and community building across the nation. Multi-faith and multicultural marches and vigils marked the losses, reminding Muslims that they did not stand alone. The rallies noted above have been met with similarly vocal anti-racist organizing. Local, provincial and national leaders have begun to speak out against systemic Islamophobia. What distinguishes the current Canadian context from that of the US has been the resolve shown by Canadian media and politicians to counter the hatred. Federal and provincial governments are actively promoting anti-hate initiatives and programming. We have quite literally said “not in our town”. Politicians, businesses, private individuals have shared this message on billboards, protest signs, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds – anywhere they can. Perhaps most powerful have been explicit statements condemning the acts of hatred we have seen across the country. The province of Ontario has passed a motion which affirms its condemnation “against all forms of hatred, hostility, prejudice, racism and intolerance; rebuke(s) the notable growing tide of antiMuslim rhetoric and sentiments; denounce(s) hate-attacks, threats of violence and hate crimes 283

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against people of the Muslim faith; condemn(s) all forms of Islamophobia”. At the federal level, MP Iqra Khalid introduced a similar motion, passed in March 2017: That, in the opinion of the House, the government should: (a) recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear; (b) condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination and take note of House of Commons’ petition e-411 and the issues raised by it. Such a public statement sends a powerful message. It hints at an empowering climate of inclusion rather than a destructive climate of hate. In the months to come, observers and activists must persist in holding governments accountable to the promises embedded in these gestures. In particular, pressure must be brought to bear on Quebec’s leaders and media pundits to reverse their history of demonization of Muslim communities.

References Allan, E. 2014. Minority identities in a minority nation: a critical analysis of Quebec’s interculturalism policy. The UBC Journal of Political Studies, 13. Retrieved from https://static1.squarespace.com/ static/53d0640be4b0c47638e3d5a4/t/53e1a798e4b0813bef9f52da/1407297452845/JPS2014.pdf. Allen, M. 2015. Police-reported Hate Crime in Canada. Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics. Ameli, S. R. and Merali, A. 2014. Only Canadian: The Experience of Hate Moderated Differential Citizenship for Muslims. Wembley: Islamic Human Rights Commission. Amiraux, V. and Araya-Moreno, J. 2014. Pluralism and radicalization: mind the gap! In P. Bramadat and L. Dawson (eds), Religious Radicalization and Securitization in Canada and Beyond (pp. 92–120). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Bakali, N. 2015. Contextualising the Quebec Charter of Values: how the Muslim “Other” is conceptualised in Quebec. Culture and Religion, 16(4), 412–429. Biles, J. and Ibrahim, H. 2002. After September 11th, 2001: A Tale of Two Canadas. Ottawa: Canadian Heritage & Metropolis. Canadian Council on American–Islamic Relations. 2002. Anti-Islam in the Media 2003. Retrieved from http://canadianislamiccongress.com/rr/rr_2003.php. Canadian Islamic Congress. 2002. Anti-Islam in the Media 2002. Waterloo: Canadian Islamic Congress. Canadian Islamic Congress. 2003. Islamic Congress Finds Most Police Departments Have Incomplete Data on Rising Tide of Hate-motivated Crimes. Waterloo: Canadian Islamic Congress. Retrieved from www. canadianislamiccongress.com/mc/media_communique.php?id=305. Canadian Islamic Congress. 2005. Anti-Islam in the Media 2042. Waterloo: Canadian Islamic Congress. CBC News. 2016. Kellie Leitch defends “anti-Canadian values” survey question. Retrieved from www. cbc.ca/news/politics/leitch-responds-survey-question-1.3746470. Chwalisz, C. 2015. The prairie populist: how Stephen Harper transformed Canada. Juncture, 22(3), 225–229. Dougherty K. 2017. Quebec mosque shooting suspect was a fan of Donald Trump and Marine le Pen. Independent, 31 January. Retrieved from www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/quebec-citymosque-shooting-latest-alexandre-bissonnette-donald-trump-marine-le-pen-facebook-social-a7554451. html. Environics. 2006. Focus Canada: The Pulse of Canadian Public Opinion. Ottawa: Environics Research Group. Geddes, J. 2013. Canadian anti-Muslim sentiment is rising, disturbing new poll reveals. Maclean’s, 2 October. Retrieved from www2.macleans.ca/author/jgeddes. Giroux, H. 2017. Political frauds, Donald Trump, and the ghost of totalitarianism. Knowledge Cultures, 4, 95–108. Goldman, J. 2015. Disability represented in/as culturally disruptive bodies within the “Quebec Charter of Values”. Knots: An Undergraduate Journal of Disability Studies, 1. Retrieved from https://jps.library. utoronto.ca/index.php/knots/article/download/22868/18633. Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International Publishers. 284

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Helly, D. and Dubé, J. 2014. The socio-political context of Islamophobic prejudices, Islamophobia Studies Journal, 2(2): 143–156. Helly, D. and Perry, B. 2016. Justice and Islam in Canada. In B. Perry, Diversity, Crime and Justice in Canada, 2nd edition (pp. 186–210). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Inglehart, R., and Norris, P. 2016. Trump, Brexit, and the rise of Populism: Economic have-nots and cultural backlash. Faculty Research Working Paper Series. Retrieved from https://research.hks.harvard. edu/publications/workingpapers/Index.aspx. Ismael, T. Y. and Measor, J. 2003. Racism and the North American media following 11 September: the Canadian setting. Arab Studies Quarterly, 25(1/2), 101–136. Kassam, A. 2017. “Islamophobia killed Canadians”: anti-Muslim rhetoric blamed in Québec attack. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/31/quebec-city-mosqueshooting-canada-far-right-politics. Khan, S., Saloojee, R. and Al-Shalchi, H. 2004. Today’s Media: Covering Islam and Canadian Muslims. Ottawa: CAIR-CAN. Mallea, P. 2011. Fearmonger. Toronto: Lorimer. Mathelet, S. L. 2015. A hidden ideological scheme under new secularism: explaining a peak of Islamophobia in Quebec (2013–2014). Islamophobia Studies Journal, 3(1), 29–43. McDonald, M. 2011. The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, 2nd edition. Toronto: Vintage. McKenna, K. 2017. Suspect in mosque shooting a moderate conservative turned extremist, say friends, classmates. CBC News Montreal, 31 January. Retrieved from www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/ quebec-city-mosque-alexandre-bissonnette-profile-1.3959581. Morgan, G. and Poynting, S. (eds). 2012. Global Islamophobia. Farnham: Ashgate. Perreaux, L. and Freeze, C. 2017. Arrest made after hate crimes spike following Quebec mosque attack. The Globe and Mail, 1 February. Retrieved from www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ police-report-rise-in-hate-crimes-after-quebec-city-mosque-attack/article33856702. Perry, B. 2015a. “All of a sudden, there are Muslims”: identities, visibilities, and Islamophobic violence in Canada. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 4(3), 4–15. Perry, B. 2015b. What Communities Want: Recognizing the Needs of Hate Crime Victims, Journal of Hate Studies, 11(1), 6–18. Potok, M. 2017. The Trump effect. Southern Poverty Law Centre, February 15. Retrieved from www.spl center.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2017/trump-effect. Potvin, M. 2010. Social and media discourse in the reasonable accommodations debate. Our Diverse Cities. 7, 78–83. Prince, M. J. 2015. Prime minister as moral crusader: Stephen Harper’s punitive turn in social policymaking. Canadian Review of Social Policy, 71, 53. Said, E. 1997. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. New York: Vintage. Silver, W., Milhorean, K., and Taylor-Butts, A. 2004. Hate Crime in Canada. Ottawa: Statistics Canada. Stockton, R. 1994. Ethnic archetypes and the Arab image. In E. McCarus (ed.), The development of ArabAmerican identity (pp. 119–153). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Toronto Star. 2015. Anti-Islam group on Rise in Quebec. Toronto Star, 25 March, A10. Toronto Star. 2017a. Protest banner asks Leitch to resign over Quebec attack. Toronto Star, February 22. Retrieved from www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/02/01/banner-calls-on-kellie-leitch-to-resignhate-puts-us-all-at-risk.html. Toronto Star. 2017b. Facing up to bigotry. Toronto Star, 2 February, P. A14. Toronto Star. 2017c. Trudeau’s message of hope for mourners. Toronto Star, 4 February. Retrieved from www.pressreader.com/canada/toronto-star/20170204/textview. Woods, A. 2015. Islam needs to reform or leave, says Canadian leader of PEGIDA movement. Toronto Star, 24 March. Retrieved from www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/03/24/islam-needs-to-reformor-leave-says-canadian-leader-of-pegida-movement.html.

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23 Understanding Islamophobia in Southeast Asia Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman

Introduction Islamophobia is one of the most significant forms of intolerance that has manifested itself in the contemporary context. The academic literature on this phenomenon is extensive and has been well documented in the Western context. Despite the worst manifestations of Islamophobia within the Asian contexts – exemplified by the genocide of the Rohingya community in Myanmar, the widespread persecution of Muslims in India and the rise of anti-Muslim online expressions resulting from the conservative turn in Muslim societies in Malaysia, there has been little written on Islamophobia in Asia. This chapter seeks to narrow this gap in the literature on Islamophobia by analysing two cases of Islamophobia, namely in Thailand and the Philippines. These two cases represent a diverse range of contexts. Thailand is a mainly Buddhist majority state whereas Philippines is a Christian majority state. Both countries have seen long-standing Muslim insurgencies in the restive provinces of Pattani (Thailand) and Mindanao (Philippines). This chapter argues that Islamophobia in Thailand and Philippines is rooted in Muslim insurgencies which could be traced to an early colonial policy that now has taken its own forms due to the increasingly religious nature of these conflicts and violence perpetrated against non-Muslims by Muslim insurgency movements. There are three parts to this chapter. First, the chapter will examine the current literature on Islamophobia and propose a conceptual framework from which Islamophobia in the Asian contexts can be understood. Second, the chapter will analyse the historical factors for the rise of Islamophobia and the contemporary manifestations of Islamophobia in these societies. Last, the chapter will examine the impact of this study as a framework in understanding Islamophobia in conflictual areas. While the Muslim populace in both Philippines and Thailand are diverse and not limited to the Muslims in the south of both countries, for the purposes of this paper, the analysis of Islamophobia will focus on the Moro Muslims (Philippines) and Malay Muslims (Thailand).

Understanding Islamophobia in Asia The word ‘Islamophobia’ first appeared first in 1910 when Alain Quellien published his seminary work titled La politique musulamen dans l’Afrique Occidentale (‘The Muslim politics in Western Africa’). 286

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The French word islamophobie was translated in English as ‘inimical feelings to Islam’. Edward Said in 1985 briefly mentioned the connection between Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in what was perhaps the first use of the term in the English language. The Runnymede Trust report in 1997 defined the term in the way it is understood today as the ‘unfounded hostility towards Muslims, and therefore fear or dislike of all or most Muslims’. An important criticism of the Runnymede Trust report is by Andrew Shryock (2010), who noted that, simultaneous to the acknowledgement of Islamophobia is the rise of a new phenomenon which he described as Islamophilia took on considerable proportions in the Western world. Shryock himself defines Islamophobia as a generalised fear of Islam and Muslims which, as a social and political problem, is almost always associated with the US and Europe, although related strains of it are well developed in India and China, in several African states with sizable Muslim minorities, and even in Muslim-majority countries where prominent political parties and opposition groups are Islamist in orientation. This definition is important for it acknowledged for the first time that Islamophobia is not limited to only Western societies and within Muslim minority context but that such conceptions ignore the possibility of Islamophobia being present in Muslim majority context. A second important contribution of Shryock’s work is his description of Islamophilia, which he explains as a generalised affection for Islam and Muslims that presented traits of Muslims that are lacking in millions of real Muslims as well. Ramon Grosfoguel and Eric Mielants (2012) argue that Islamophobia is most fundamentally and generatively present in the foundations of ‘Western epistemic architecture’, since it is from Western hegemonic identity politics and epistemic privilege that the ‘rest’ of the epistemologies and cosmologies in the world are subalternised as myth, religion and folklore, and that the downgrading of any form of non-Western knowledge occurs. It is from this hegemonic epistemic location that Western thinkers produce Orientalism about Islam (ibid.). Edward Curtis (see Ernst 2013) focused on the case study of the United States in which he noted that Islamophobia shifted from racial paradigms to the cultural ones. The immigrant Muslims from the Middle East were classified as whites, while the Black Muslims were discredited on racial lines. He notices that, in the post-9/11 era, the focus of American anxiety has shifted from Black American Muslims to brown foreigners, but regular procedures continue to include the suppression of critiques of US policies and the rewarding of Muslim groups that remain apolitical and uncritical. There are a number of key problems associated with these conceptions of Islamophobia that I argue could not satisfactorily analyse the phenomenon within Asian contexts. First, the case studies ignore the presence of Islamophobia in non-Western contexts which takes a different form altogether. In many of these societies, Islamophobia emerges due to the colonial experience of each of these societies. Second, hegemonic identity politics is not limited to Western ones; Islamophobia can be an outcome of non-Western hegemonic identity politics. In India, Hindu nationalist movements have long categorised Muslims as foreigners who sought to undermine the Hindu character of the Indian nation.1 Likewise, in Myanmar, Muslims have also been referred to as foreigners and are not seen to be part of the Buddhist nature of the Burmese nation. It is thus crucial that an analysis of the phenomenon takes into consideration the unique nature of Islamophobia in Asia.

Conceptualising Islamophobia in Asia Islamophobia in Asia has had a long history. Much of the cases of Islamophobia in the Asian contexts can be traced to the colonial period, which saw the colonial powers within the region transporting the biases against Muslims in the Middle East and Europe to their Muslim colonial subject. The Spaniards and Portuguese fought Muslims in different parts of Southeast Asia 287

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such as Melaka in the Malay Archipelago and the Philippines with the aims of converting these largely Muslim societies to Christianity. The colonial powers also adopted a divide-and-rule approach in its management of ethnicity so as to consolidate power in the colonised states. This could be seen in the example of India where problems between the Muslims and Hindus occurred largely due to the British policy of dividing different communities along religious lines. Second, the rise of religious nationalism in many parts of the region can also explain the rising anti-Muslim feelings as seen from the cases of India and Myanmar which has seen a recent rise in anti-Muslim violence. These religious nationalisms are often pushed for by extremist religious civil society actors. In Sri Lanka, the Bodu Bala Sena movement has sought for the marginalisation of Muslims in the country accusing the Muslims of attempting to convert the Buddhist population to Islam. Third, there has been a spillover effect of Islamophobia from the West into Asia. This could be seen primarily in news reporting on Islam. Fourth, Islamophobia in Asia can happen within Muslim majority contexts such as Malaysia, where a state-driven Islamisation process has led to the hardening of non-Muslims’ attitude toward Islam. In Indonesia, conflict centring around religious issues has led to some Christian politicians employing Islamophobic language to galvanise political support. Last and the most relevant dimension of Islamophobia for the purposes of this paper is how long-term insurgencies have taken an increasingly religious tone and in turn have led to a counter-reaction that is strongly Islamophobic as will be demonstrated in the next section of the paper.

Islamophobia in the Philippines Islamophobia in the Philippines can be traced to the colonial period but has in recent times been more close to the struggle of the Muslim minority in southern Philippines for independence. This was expressed in government policies aimed at quelling the ‘rebellious Muslims of the south of the Philippines’, which often translates into policies such as transmigration aimed at decimating the influence of the Muslims in the south, violence against Muslims, land-grabbing and excluding Muslims from the monolithic definition of the Filipino Catholic identity. Beyond government policies, public expressions of Islamophobia have particularly targeted Muslim dressings and the construction of the violent, intolerant and savage image of Muslims in the country.

The colonial encounter The Spanish conquest of the Philippines marked the beginning of anti-Muslim attitudes in the country. Fresh from their triumphant wars against Muslim rulers in Spain, the Spanish arrived in the archipelago, seeking to purge Islam from the region and unite it under the banner of Catholicism (Ahmed and Martin 2012). The Spanish used the term ‘Moro’ to describe Muslims because they falsely believed the Muslims to be Moors – Muslims whom they had developed vehemently negative images of in Spain (Banlaoi 2004; Gowing 1964). To the Spanish, ‘Moro’ meant a range of pejoratives – ‘cunning, ruthless, cruel, treacherous savage; a pirate; a raider; and salver’ (Gowing 1979). To eradicate what they believed were the ‘evil and false doctrines of Mahoma’ (Ahmed and Martin 2012), the Spanish fought a series of battles with Muslims, known as the Moro Wars, for 300 years until the 19th century (McAmis 1974; Quimpo 2008; Santos Jr. 2005). Additionally, the Spanish supplemented their violence with proselytising missions to convert people en masse in order to maintain the primacy of Catholicism over Islam (McKenna 1997). Indeed, the missionaries in the Spanish colonial apparatus studied, ‘gathered and disseminated’ information pertaining to Muslims (e.g. beliefs, practices, rituals, etc.) in 288

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order to discover and develop the most ‘effective means to evangelise the Moslems and convert them into Catholicism’ (Majul 1966). The Spanish maintained a divide-and-conquer regime by keeping the Catholics and Muslims geographically separated in the North and South respectively (ibid.). Doing so, the catalysed mistrust between the two enabled the Spanish to socialise Catholics to know no loyalties apart from the Spanish Crown and the Catholic Church, and use them to fight the Moros – thus, symbolically continuing the Crusades (ibid.). Following the defeat of the Spaniards, the colonial rule under the Americans implemented two major Islamophobic policies while running the Philippines. The Americans distrusted the Muslims in the south and maintained a dual system of rule, civilian in the north and military in the south, on the gorunds that Muslim dominated regions were insufficiently ‘civilised’ and thus needed firm military governorship to transit into ‘western civilisation’ (Abinales 1997). Second, though the US initially provided the Sultanate with certain governance roles through the 1899 Bates Treaty (e.g. stopping anti-American resistance), ‘it unilaterally abrogated the Bates Treaty March 2, 1904, claiming the Muslim Sultan of Sulu had failed to quell Moro resistance’ (Kho n.d.). Instead, the colonial administration installed Catholic leaders in Muslim regions (Domingo 1995). This move was perceived as a step to undermine Muslim leadership and Islamic ways of life (Mednick 1974).

Transmigration to decimate Muslim influence Prior to receiving self-governance, president of the senate Manuel Quezon facilitated the mass migration of Catholics in the north to the Muslim-majority south. About 46,683 people migrated from the north and central regions to Mindanao between 1917 and 1939 (Magdalena 1995). After achieving independence, the central government intensified the immigration programme, facilitating the movement of ‘tens of thousands of’ Catholics into Mindanao (ibid.). The central government also imposed laws to confiscate land from the native Moros and handed them to Catholic settlers – a move which has till today intensified Muslim resentment of Catholics (Muslim 1994). The 1939 National Land Settlement Administration (NSLA) was initiated to give land in Mindanao to Catholic military trainees so they ran farms after completing their stints with the military (Rodil 1993). By 1950, just as the NSLA was abolished, 8,300 families moved from the north to Mindanao (Rodil 1993). As a result of these policies, the population in Mindanao shifted from being 76% Muslim in 1903 to 72.5% Catholic in 2000 (Ahmed and Martin 2012).

Muslim insurgency as trigger for Islamophobia in post-colonial Philippines The armed conflict between the Muslim guerrillas and the Philippine state began with the declaration of martial law in 1972 by the then President Ferdinand Marcos. The turning point in the Moro-Filipino government relations occurred in 1972 following the Jabidah Massacre. Despite numerous attempts aimed at achieving peace, this intractable conflict has continued to claim more than one hundred thousand lives. The conflict has led to a strong sense of bias against Muslims in government policies. Elites from the Catholic community were permitted to maintain Catholic-based private militias, particularly after former Filipino president, Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law, to protect their ‘grabbed’ land – a move that Muslims read as designed to keep them out (McDougald 1987). In 1971, the Ilaga, a particularly infamous Christian militia, ‘killed 70 Moros in a mosque’ (Ahmed and Martin 2012). The 1972 declaration of martial law itself carried an Islamophobic dimension in that it stripped the right of Moros to bear arms and thus effectively resist against a regime that had outwardly behaved in a 289

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neo-colonial fashion and maintain the marginality of Moros. It is arguable that this factor caused the civil war between Moros and the central government to erupt. In 2000, authorities in Pasig City (east of Manila) implemented an identity card system for the 2000 Muslim residents there because of fears that Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Abu Sayyaf terror groups would use the city as a base (Alquitran 2000). This policy made it mandatory for Muslims to carry identification cards so that the police can determine if they have terrorist sympathies. Security forces fighting terrorists have been profiling Muslims living in the Marawi area which has seen an upsurge of violence because the ‘conflict, unfortunately, is being committed by Muslims’, so they believe they are compelled ‘to profile Muslim areas’ in order to ensure ‘there are no sympathisers with the terrorists’ (Cockburn 2017). Muslims who have left Marawi for Western Visayas have been subject to profiling that is apparently carried out by other Muslims under the instructions of local authorities because of fears that terrorists may have infiltrated these networks (Rendon 2017). Additionally, authorities in Luzon have been deliberating the idea of instituting an identification card system as mentioned earlier (Holmes 2017; Mawallil 2017).

Public expressions of Islamophobia While the above government policies are targeted at Muslims in the south of the Philippines, the wider Filipino societies also held strong biases against Muslims, such as expressions against Muslim women dressings as well as anti-Muslim sentiments in social media and mainstream media outlets.

Constructing the image of the Muslim Other For the Filipino government, Moro subjectivities is constructed in the Filipino national imaginary by: (1) using symbols, stories, and perspectives of the majority Catholics to shape and define Filipino history, (2) excluding the experiences of the Moros since they are the largest minority, to manufacture a monolithic Catholic-based Filipino national identity, and (3) assimilate Muslims into the ‘Catholic version’ of Filipino nationhood (Quimpo 2008). In Filipino grade school classes, Moros were presented as warrior peoples who were to be feared and could not be trusted because they refused to convert to Christianity (Angeles 2010). Christian Filipinos also used the term Moro and its connotations as they learned to include civilised/uncivilised, peaceful/violent, monogamist/polygamist, Christian/Moro; hence, multiple binaries with the Moros clustered in all the negatives and with the Christian majority placing themselves in the positive sides. This view of otherness based primarily on religious distinction was further complicated by various issues such as the settlement of Christians in Muslim ancestral lands (ibid.). The headscarf and face veils have become targets of Islamophobic behaviour. For many Filipino Christians, the hijab and niqab represents backwardness of the Muslim culture which runs contrary to the more progressive image of Filipino Catholics. In 2012, Pilar College, a Catholic school in Zamboanga – a city in southern Philippines – became what is thought to be the first Filipino school to ban Muslim students from wearing the hijab (Agence France-Presse 2012). The college contested this accusation by stating that the ban was imposed a century ago, and that the resident community were working together to rid the ban (Emaquel II 2012). In 2013, the education ministry issued a directive stating Muslim teachers in the southern Philippines should remove the niqab when they are teaching in classrooms – though they can wear them in other parts of the campus – in order to improve student–teacher relations and the effectiveness of teaching language pronunciation (Dacany 2013; National 2013). There have 290

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also allegedly been incidents of taxi drivers refusing to drive women who happen to be wearing the hijab (Lozada 2014). Much has been written about the role of the media in perpetuating Islamophobia. The mass media shapes public understanding and the attitudes towards Islam and Muslims by encoding messages, which reflect the dynamics of power relations. Encoding, according to Stuart Hall, is a process of producing news, which is the result of the relations of production, frames of knowledge, and technical infrastructure at the site of a news organisation. The current dynamics of global power position Islam as the ‘enemy’ of the West, of capitalism, of secularism, of modernity, of Christianity, of Judaism, even of women and individualism. This could be seen from the example of an article written by Christian fundamentalist preacher, Dr Jose Dacudao in the aftermath of 9/11. The article published in the Philippine Star, a popular newspaper stated that ‘the Quran is a curse on humanity’ because it can even make ‘the most peaceful Muslim communities produce fundamentalist warriors’ (Noor 2001). More recently following the Mamasapano incident, Islamophobic discourses dominate both the mainstream media and social media. The deaths of 44 Special Action Force officers in the hands of Muslim rebels in the Mamasapano area in Mindanao led to a degree of mistrust between Christians and Muslims as reflected in social media. A video that found its way to the public showing one of the 44 being shot twice at close range ‘spread very quickly on social media’. Its release, coupled with gory photos that came out after the attack, led to a flurry of anti-Muslim remarks made in social media, playing up on stereotypes of Muslims as barbaric, violent and merciless (Tiglao 2018).

Islamophobia in Thailand Like the Philippines, Islamophobia in the country is very much shaped by the conflict in the restive southern provinces of Thailand where Muslims have sought to establish an independent state. Unlike the Philippines, there was no long history of anti-Muslim attitude in Thailand. In fact for much of its history, the Malay-Muslim sultanates and the Siamese empire enjoyed peaceful, amicable, and mutually beneficial trade relations (Liow 2009). The Siamese empire and the Sultanates were located in a tributary system – the Sultanates paid the Siamese King a ‘fee’ to do business, and avoid violence and conquest (Gilquin 2005).

Centralised Buddhist nation Though Thailand was never colonised, it nonetheless had to manage relations with the British Malaya. In 1909, the British and Thai signed an agreement that saw the division of the current Thai deep south and northern Malaysia between the Siamese and British empires (Dorairajoo 2009). Under this agreement, Kelantan, Terengganu, Perlis and Kedah fell under British control, while Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and Songkhla became absorbed into the increasingly centralised Siamese government (Gilquin 2005). This agreement marginalised the traditional positions of the Sultan authority (Dorairajoo 2009). This was further compounded by the Thai state attempts to centralise power and define the state as Thai in substance and essence. In 1921, a policy was enacted which made it compulsory for Malay-Muslim children to attend Thaimedium primary schools (Primary Education Act) with the intention to push the Malay language into extinction (Che Man 1985). In 1938, Phibun Songkhram became Thailand’s prime minister and began catalysing the spread of Thai nationalism, with membership into the Thai national imaginary becoming based on Thai superiority, the centrality of Buddhism to governance, and the desire to reclaim the ‘glorious’ history of the Siamese empire (Gilquin 2005). As such, Songkhram sought to manufacture a nation-state – despite the obvious heterogeneity of 291

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the population – by implementing policies that would eliminate ethno-religious traditions dear to the Malay-Muslims (Che Man 1985). Songkhram also implemented policies which made it illegal to wear Malay-Muslim outfits, speak Jawi (old Malay language), celebrate Muslim festivals publicly, and pressured employers to hire people with Thai-sounding names – thus excluding Malay-Muslims from employment opportunities (Braam 2010). Furthermore, there were also cases in which over-zealous soldiers or police forced Muslims to prostrate themselves before or salute sacred Buddhist objects (ibid.). Provisions for sharia law in marriage, divorce, and inheritance were also set aside in favour of Buddhist laws (Forbes 1982). In reaction to the repression of the state, various Muslim rebel groups (e.g. Barisan Revolusi Nasional, founded in 1960) emerged to demand for an independent Muslim state. Some of these groups also utilised military means to achieve their goals. Armed separatism in southern Thailand peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s, endorsed and supported both by leaders and governments in the Middle East who provided financial aid, training and, ultimately refuge, as well as a mushrooming of Thai Malay-Muslims living abroad from which sympathy and support were drawn (Liow and Pathan 2009). Despite the emergence in the 1990s of other groups such as the GMIP (Gerakan Mujahideen Islam Patani or Patani Islamic Mujahideen Movement), the military wings of these separatist groups began to crumble in the face of the Thai government’s anti-insurgency approach. In the 2000s, under the government of Thaksin Shinawartha, a harsh war on drugs was initiated, which ignored extra-judicial killings. The drug war, by design, inevitably targeted the deep south due to a higher rate of drug abuse in the South (Croissant 2005, 2007). As a result of such historical shifts, which contained policies that had actual anti-Muslim dimensions, the Thai state has been fighting against a complex insurgency from the deep south. The Thai governments have attempted to implement more accommodative policies towards Malay-Muslims (Forbes 1982). However, deep-seated mistrust on both the side of Thai Muslims and Buddhists has contributed to the continuous mistrust between both sides.While the reasons for the Southern Thailand conflict are rooted in the historical and political grievances particular to the region’s relationships with the various central governments, the Thai government has framed the conflict as a battle against Islamist terrorism (McCargo 2008). This narrative of the state has led to an overestimation of the influence of Islam in the conflict. In particular, the Thai state has viewed the pondoks (Islamic boarding schools) as important sites for recruitment and mobilisation of the Muslim insurgents. By association, the Thai state also targeted the ustaz (religious scholars) running the pondoks as supporters of the insurgents. As a result, the Thai state has attempted to co-opt religious scholars, influence Islamic education, and thus govern Islam – measures which contain an anti-Muslim dimension (ibid.). Joseph Liow (2009) noted that the harsh approach of the Thai state in dealing with these religious institutions has further exacerbated hatred for the state and in fact has become a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby some of the religious scholars who previously had no militant links have become a lot more sympathetic to these groups.

Indiscriminate violence against Muslims The Thai state has also used indiscriminate violence in dealing with the Malay-Muslim leaders (e.g. Haji Sulong in 1958; Somchai Neelapaijit in 2004) who have fought for, campaigned, or defended the rights of the marginalised people from the deep south. Many have been subjected to kidnapping with such stunning regularity by the central government (or its affiliates) that these occurrences have been called the state’s de facto policy to discourage Malay-Muslim activism (Suaedy 2010). One of the most notorious acts of violence against Thai Muslims occurred in 292

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2004, in what became known as the Tak Bai massacre (Cumming-Bruce 2012). A demonstration of 1,500 people to protest the detention of six men led to violence and subsequent detention of the protesters by the Thai military. During the arrests, the detainees were then stacked atop one another in trucks, which led to the death of 78 protesters. The Thai government defended the action of the military and an inquiry in 2009 into the incident found no wrongdoings on the part of the Thai military (Bangkok Post 2012). The Thai state also implemented a policy of issuing national identification cards which indicate one’s religion; thus ‘categorised individuals, fixed them in their religious belief, and labelled them once and for all’ (Gilquin 2005). In theory, one can abstain from having his religion included on the ID card (US Department of State 2005). Given that the Thai state defines itself in terms of Buddhism, it is probable that this policy was designed to make it easier for police to identify and locate Muslims. This is largely stemmed from the trust deficit between Malay Muslims and the Thai state (Engvall 2011). Indeed, the trust deficit is likely to be exasperated by the fact that in the post-9/11 environment, international actors have viewed Southeast Asia (particularly Thailand and the Philippines) as an environment ripe for terrorism (Acharya and Acharya 2007).

Public expressions of Islamophobia in Thailand Othering of Thai Muslims The expression of Islamophobia is similar to the Philippines. Thai Buddhists tend to stereotype Malay Muslims as having violent predispositions (Dorairajoo 2009). The ideological impact of Thai-Buddhist nationalism has necessarily excluded Malay Muslims who, according to dominant national ideology, possess the two ‘non-Thai’ qualities of speaking Jawi and being Muslim (Keyes 2009). As a result, up till today Thai Buddhists tend to view and refer to Malay Muslims in the deep south as guests (khaek) – a pejorative term that discursively cements their exclusion from the Thai national imaginary (ibid.). One of the most important expressions of Islamophobia in Thailand is the antipathy expressed by some Thai Buddhists over the building of mosques within their communities. In the north-eastern Thai city of Khon Kaen, the registration of a converted home as a mosque riled up local Buddhist groups which cited terrorism as a key reason for why this mosque should not be registered. In the letter addressed to the governor, the community noted that: Buddhists in the locale and its vicinity are of the opinion that waves of terrorism are spreading all over . . . so people don’t want the mosque built because they fear unrest in the area like what’s happening in the southern border provinces. (Ahmad 2017) The campaign against the building of mosques has been taken to the social media with the setting up of a Facebook page titled ‘Isaan Says No to Mosque’. Members of the page called on the local authorities to first conduct a referendum before allowing a mosque to be built (Rojanaphruk 2017).

Extremist monks and transnational Buddhist nationalism Finally, there appears to be a proliferation of anti-Muslim Buddhist fundamentalist movement in Thailand. While the numbers are not clear, prominent monks – such as Phra Maha Apichat 293

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Punnajanto, a fiery preacher at the Marble Temple in Bangkok – have called for mosques to be burnt down in retaliation for monks being killed in the deep south (Wongcha-um 2016). The anti-Muslim monks have drawn on the example of extremist Buddhist nationalist organisations in Myanmar. The infamous Burmese monk U Wirathu and the extremist Buddhist group the Ma Ba Tha (Protection of Nationality and Religion), whose anti-Muslim rhetoric helped stoke deadly riots in 2012 and 2013 in Myanmar, were cited as a source of inspiration for monks such as Maha Apichat (Seiff and Jirenuwat 2016) and the monks in the 969 Movement, which has played a vital role in the spread of Islamophobia in Burma and inciting violence against Muslims. The monks from the 969 movement have encouraged violent actions against 15,000 Facebook posts sounding the alarm for an alleged threat coming from the Rohingyas. Government leaders have been ambivalent toward the activities of the 969 Movement. On the one hand, prominent state politicians have defended leaders of the movement while governmental religious authorities have rejected some of the 969 initiatives (Ferrie and Oo 2013). Due to the revered position of the monks, the state could be perceived to be anti-Buddhist or anti-monk if they are to take a harsher stance against the monks (Mohamed Osman 2017). The transnational dimension of the Buddhist nationalism can be seen in a conference organised by a group of Thai Buddhist nationalist. In February, 2016, the Alliance of Buddhist Leaders organised a conference on ‘Crisis in the Buddhist World’. A leader of the Sri Lankan Bodu Bala Sena cited earlier in the paper spoke at the conference citing the Islamic faith as a future ‘threat’ to Buddhism, while the president of Ma Ba Tha, Sayadaw Ashin Daywaindarbhivamsa, was bestowed the World Buddhist Outstanding Leader Award (Aung 2016). Like in Myanmar, the Thai Buddhist fundamentalist movement perceives Thailand to be under siege and at risk of being taken over by Islam despite the fact that over 90% of Thailand is Buddhist (Wongcha-um 2016). Unlike in Myanmar and Sri Lanka where Buddhist nationalist movements received support from elements within the government, the Thai authorities have taken a hard stance against Maha Apichat who was arrested in September 2017 because of anti-Islamic statements he posted online (Nation 2017). He was forcibly defrocked of his monk status and detained. Thai government has labelled him as a threat to national security (Reuters 2017). However, this hard stance against extremism might not be contained as the influence of Buddhist nationalist movement grows and anti-Muslim sentiment follows.

Conclusion Islamophobia in Thailand and Philippines have been largely shaped by the dynamics of separatism in the southern parts of both countries. In Philippines, Islamophobia is deep-seated and harked back to the modern history of both countries. The repressive policies of both the Filipino and Thai state against the cultural and religious rights of their Muslim minority populace led to an ongoing armed rebellion seeking the establishment of an independent Muslim state. These armed rebellion lead to the assumption that the Islamic religion is the primary factor that led to the violence. This association made between Islam and violence led to various policies enacted aimed at the destruction of Muslim religious institutions, further curtailment of Muslim religious rights, as well as the political and the economic marginalisation of Muslims. At the public level, the association of Islam with violence perpetuated by the media and extremist religious elements has led to the negative perception of Muslims that are viewed to be violent and problematic. Ultimately, the challenge of Islamophobia in both countries is not likely to dissipate and will continue to grow especially in light of the growth of Islamophobia internationally. 294

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Note 1 For an examination of the impact of Islamophobia in encouraging Islamist violence in India, see Aida Arosoaie (2018) Understanding the Creation and Radicalisation of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and the Indian Mujahideen (IM), South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies

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24 Islamophobia in US education Shabana Mir and Loukia K. Sarroub

Introduction Anti-Muslim sentiment has grown in scale and visibility far beyond its association with the horrific attacks of 2001. The US government’s “War on Terror,” which began after the attacks, often pervades the domestic landscape as a war on Islamic religious “extremism.” The definitions and content of such religious extremism are so extensive that they encompass large numbers of Muslims, and they highlight Muslims as being inherently problematic. For example, the success of the 2016 presidential campaign can be said to have relied significantly on a right-wing Islamophobic fear-mongering that shariah was set to take over the US. As we grappled with the writing of this chapter about Islamophobia in US education, it became clear to us that the work that educators do daily in schools, colleges, and universities cannot be separated from a politics that undermines democratic and pluralistic values. Our chapter aims to examine current political and policy practices that are ultimately eroding a long-held and highly valued goal of “education for all.” In the first part of the chapter, we explain how “Islamophobia” has become a social fact of school life for many young people in US public schools. We then present an analysis of the Islamophobia as politically situated in higher education settings. Throughout the chapter, we offer ideas for curbing and ultimately eradicating an Islamophobia that is toxic to the educational aims of the United States.

US school-age Muslim youth in context In our review of news media outlets between 2015–2017 about Islamophobia and schools, we discovered 55 documented cases of “Islamophobia” in the US and 61 in North America, and these account for only the ones reported in major newspapers, so they do not include cases that were not reported regionally or nationally, and in many of the federally refugee designated sites. While these incidents have continued to occur over time, scholars of education have attempted to address from multiple angles how key stakeholders such as schools, students, parents, and educators might negotiate this cultural and social reality. For example, in her 2011 letter from the editorial board of the high school journal, education scholar Kate Allman wrote the following as part of the call for research and practice pieces in connection to Islamophobia: 298

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In a recent Newsweek article, Denis MacShane brought national attention to “Islamophobia”, a term that has been used for the past two decades to describe an irrational fear of Islam that results in discriminatory practices towards those perceived to be Muslim. As William Dalrymple explained in a follow-up in The New York Times, this renewal of those fears stems from the American tendency to see the Islamic world as a “single, terrifying monolith” – prejudicial perceptions that continue to result in the marginalization of Muslims from the social, political, and public life of the nation and our schools. While this journal is uncomfortable with the term “Islamophobia” for its etymological generalizations, we, like others, argue that Newsweek’s widespread publication of the term offers scholars an opportunity to raise questions about the current culture of fear directed towards Muslims in America. More specifically, we think that it is important to explore how fears targeted at Muslim students are surfacing in schools – particularly secondary schools – and how this problem might be addressed in and through curriculum and pedagogy. In line with Allman’s call for research on the topic, we agree that this is a critical time for US public schools because multiple populations of students face discrimination, marginalization, and the very real fear of being targeted as potential threats to society. Several years ago in the United States and in the aftermath of 9/11, an ELL high school boy from Mexico who had been in the United States for 5 years and who was enrolled in ELL class Loukia was observing (Sarroub 2007), noted that people thought he was an Arab Muslim and gave him a hard time about it, calling him “sand nigga” and “towel head,” so he proceeded to get a tattoo on his left arm that said in block letters, “LATINO” and would hold up his arm whenever he heard these labels, which he found insulting. At the time, the young man was friends and interacted daily at school with Iraqi, Kurd, and Syrian refugees from the Second Gulf War, who themselves sometimes experienced the name-calling as well as the furtive looks from their peers and people in their Midwestern city. Since that time, young Muslim people in the US who are school aged often have been perceived as a national security risk (Fine and Sirin 2008), and popular culture has further exacerbated this idea of “othering” Arabs and Muslims in films and other social media (cf. Mahdi 2016). As noted by The Guardian: Fifty-five percent of Muslim students surveyed by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) . . . reported that they were bullied at school in some form because of their Islamic faith. That’s twice the national percentage of bullying reported by all students, regardless of their religion. According to the CAIR survey, verbal harassment is the most common, with non-Muslims calling Muslim students terrorists or referencing bombs. (Irshad 2015) While some educational scholars have resisted the term “Islamophobia” to describe patterns of discrimination within schools, Islamophobia has taken root in schools and among youth in public schools, and there is no end to it in sight. As recently reported by news media outlets such as Mother Jones (Rizga 2016), which devoted attention to Islamophobia in US schools, the Census Bureau estimates that there are 1.8 million Arab Americans in the United States, an increase of 51 percent since 2000, and 45 percent of high school students have heard racist remarks about Arabs in their classrooms. In a recent poll, 54 percent of Americans said they did not want to accept refugees from places like Syria, worrying that the government does not have the ability to screen out potential terrorists. Since 2012, 21,000 Syrian refugees have relocated to the United States, with roughly 299

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50 percent being under the age of 14 and attending US schools, and they too continue to experience both discrimination and marginalization in their schools and communities. Furthermore, the role of discrimination may be a major factor in Muslims’ emotional struggles as social and cultural targets. Although American Muslims are likely to share the same general values and aspirations as their fellow Americans, there remains a strong anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States (Ravitz 2009). According to the Pew Research Center (2009), 58 percent of Americans see Muslims as facing a lot of discrimination. American Jews, at 35 percent, are the next highest group who report facing discrimination. Overall and during the past ten years, a dramatic rise in Islamophobia and hate crimes toward Muslims has manifested itself in the forms of community opposition to several proposed Islamic centers across the country, vandalism of mosques, anti-Muslim rhetoric in the media, and violence toward American Muslims (Esposito and Lalwani, 2010). Within US public schools, there has been increased lack of awareness and need to recognize and respond appropriately to Islamophobia when it takes place on school grounds. Whereas Sarroub (2005) and Muir and Zine (2018[1999]) had respectively reported and crafted ways prior to and shortly after 9/11 in which schools and teachers could constructively and productively accommodate Muslim students, this became more difficult both after 9/11 and during the years leading to the 2016 US presidential election. “I was afraid they [teachers and administration] would have their own opinions and give priority to the others,” reported one California student when asked about reporting Islamophobic bullying to teachers. One in five Muslim students reported being discriminated against by school staff. A 2014 study by Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) study found 29% of students who wore hijab experienced offensive touching or pulling of their scarves. These incidents are taking a psychological toll on Muslim youth. “At a crucial time in their identity development, they’re suffering from chronic trauma,” says Dr. Halim Naeem, a psychotherapist and president of The Institute of Muslim Mental Health. Dr. Naeem says that in the last few months alone, he has seen increased cases of depression, anxiety, image issues, paranoia, and substance abuse among Muslim American youth (Irshad 2015). Additionally, Muslim students in schools are not the only ones who suffer from discrimination in schools during “Islamophobic” events. Teachers, too, sometimes bear the brunt of discrimination and ill-will. For example, a teacher in Gwinnett County, Georgia received a hand-written note telling her that she should hang herself with her head scarf rather than wear it on her head (Sharpe 2016). As in this teacher’s case, all educators bear the responsibility of not only teaching students but also fostering understanding and facilitating awareness and minimizing acts of hate, racism, and discrimination because the short and long-term effects on young people are deleterious (Herzig 2014).

Imagining and implementing a response to Islamophobia in US schools Our review of the research literature on Islamophobia and schools reveals several key studies that demonstrate the scope of the problem as well as ways to address it. The research spans a wide array of transformative pedagogies as well as theoretical understandings to enact change to improve the human condition within educational settings. Importantly, they offer tangible options for communities and schools to engage in conversation and practices that promote a more just and open society. One line of productive research focuses on better understanding Muslim identity in different contexts and across different ethnic groups. Zine’s (2004, 2006) work, for example, focuses on critically examining resources for anti-Islamophobia education to counteract neo-Orientalist 300

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representations. She also explores how gender and womanhood are negotiated among young women who wear the hijab. Similarly, Fine and Sirin (2008) conducted a mixed methods study to better understand the identities of Muslim youth aged 12–18 and found that young women and women negotiated discrimination and marginalization in gendered ways. Another area of research inquiry that is more or less connected to resilience, or to use feminist philosopher’s Judith Butler’s words, “insurrectionary acts,” with which young Muslims in the US adapt to challenging situations by creating positive and counter narrative pathways. One such study by Abu-Ras, Senzai, and Laird (2013) demonstrates that in spite of the initial national, negative response, 9/11 led to positive changes in people’s religious identities and facilitated adaptive action that strengthened community bonds. In the same vein, Maira (2010), reports how Muslim East Asian high school students fostered a sense of belonging via the dissenting citizenship of these immigrants that questions cultural consumption, cyberculture, as well as gendered notions of dissent and “good” Muslim identity. Shabana’s book (Mir 2014) offers a powerful and important critique of young women on a college campus who weather the combined “double-scrutiny” of their nation and their community as Muslim women, and thus experience competing and sometimes conflicting dualities that are negotiated daily in their quest to pursue higher education. While our aim is not to provide an exhaustive list of research on Islamophobia and US education, and given that our review of relevant literature uncovered recently published doctoral dissertations that include promising directions in better understanding how Muslim youth “make it” in schools, a key area of research that we deem as critical currently sponsors immediate, pragmatic, and reform-minded pedagogies in the schools that address how and what young people read, write, and talk about in their classes with their peers and teachers. One example is the work of Allman (2017) in which she examines the counter-stories generated by Muslim youth in a North Carolina high school as they resist national discourses. These serve as important texts that actively enact identities within their school that support their reality rather than the one imposed on them by negative media portrayals. Loukia, in All American Yemeni Girls (Sarroub 2005), describes in ethnographic detail how the high school administration coordinated with Yemeni community members ways to accommodate academic, religious, social, and cultural norms across settings with the assistance and leadership of students as well as school/community liaisons. Forman (2004) and Bigelow (2010) establish connections between youth linguistic and cultural practices of Somali students in their respective educational settings, and they emphasize the importance of research and policy decisions that are grounded in the lived realities of these young people. Lived realities of young people currently include mixed messages about what it means to be educated and to belong in the United States. As war, famine, displacement continue to ravage areas of the world from which people will flee and seek refuge, it is essential that schools and communities find ways to counter pervasive stereotypes and harmful actions toward Muslims and all people. After all, the United States, Europe, and other nations have long histories of participation for providing refuge to so many of the worlds’ peoples, despite the intermittent, troubling, and alienating international polices that sometimes emerge as government leadership changes. If the aim is to educate all children, then it follows that civic responsibility in and out of school must work hand in hand with calling attention to and stopping Islamophobia.

Islamophobia in US higher education In this section of our chapter, we shed light on the repercussions of Islamophobia for US academia, faculty, and students in post-secondary settings. The focus is mainly on key events and 301

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trends that occurred during the past two decades. Specifically, Shabana draws on her ethnographic work in university settings to bear on Muslim students’ experiences of Islamophobia in campus culture.

The travel ban Politicians and the US government have participated in apportioning collective guilt to Muslim Americans for any terrorist attack that had any Muslim involvement, and they have generated widespread belligerence, hostility, and suspicion regarding Muslims. Every terrorist attack involving a Muslim is followed by an uptick in the level of anti-Muslim attacks by individuals, groups, and government agencies. After the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, for instance, physical and verbal attacks on Muslims were reported after the bombing (Sacchetti 2013), with a Saudi student injured in the blast being treated like a suspect in the news and by law enforcement (Byers 2016). After the San Bernardino shooting, Republican presidential candidates raised the specter of war. Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives could figure out what is going on”. Trump’s campaign manager explained that the ban on entering the US would apply to tourists and potential immigrants – in fact “everyone” (Kozlowska 2015). While Democratic candidates were not beating war drums, the language of war was still present under a thin veneer of Countering Violent Extremism policies, where Muslims are all regarded as security risks, unless they are “saved” from the danger of a violent Islam. “The vast majority of Muslims are on our side of the battle unless we drive them away”, Hillary Clinton said (Oliphant and Whitesides 2015). This negative climate against Muslims has affected recruitment, enrollment, employment, curriculum, pedagogy, institutional climate, and student experiences in US higher education. After the San Bernardino shooting, Larycia Hawkins the first black female tenured professor at Wheaton College, expressed solidarity with the Muslim community by posting a photograph of herself on Facebook wearing a hijab, with an accompanying statement asserting, “As Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.” Wheaton retaliated by placing Hawkins on administrative leave and started proceedings to terminate her employment. Eventually, Hawkins agreed to resign. Such public consequences, apparently for a statement of goodwill and ecumenical harmony, send a clear message that academic work and speech in matters of Islam is politically charged and, in these days of employment precarity, solidarity with Muslims can be ill-afforded. Such administrative behavior also conveys the notion that anti-Muslim racism is acceptable. Disturbingly, just one year later, five Wheaton football players abducted a freshman from his dorm, put a pillowcase over his head, tied him with duct-tape, played Middle Eastern music, implying that he had been kidnapped by Muslims, and then made offensive comments about Muslims, even attempting to insert an object into the freshman’s rectum, while joking about having sex with a goat (Schelkopf 2018). In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the horrific cold-blooded murder of three Muslim American students, Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha, caused academic communities to become aware of the real danger faced by their Muslim students. Deah, a SyrianAmerican student at the University of North Carolina’s School of Dentistry, had just married Yusor, a North Carolina State University graduate, two months prior, and Yusor’s sister, Razan was a student at North Carolina State University. Their neighbor, Craig Hicks, knocked on their apartment door, and when Deah answered, shot all three, execution-style, in their heads. Commentators linked the murders with the election cycle, the hatemongering of Fox News and other media outlets, the War on Terror, and “anti-extremism” programs, arguing that it was no surprise such pervasive anti-Muslim hate would result in such violent acts (Stancill 2016). 302

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The Trump administration continued not only with discursive Islamophobia but with concrete policy. In 2017, Trump’s executive order (and his main election promise to anti-Muslim voters) temporarily banning immigration to the US from the Muslim-majority countries of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen took effect. This caused widespread unease among current students, student applicants, and faculty, as their ability to pursue an education, to travel and then to return to continue work, to conduct international internships, and to visit family in their countries was now shrouded in doubt (Deruy 2017; Cohen 2017). Students have been detained at airports, and on occasion, they have been handcuffed like criminals (Wong 2017). Students who are from Muslim-majority countries not on the travel ban have also reported difficulties entering the US (Wermund 2018). A new travel ban applicable to Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela (in limited cases), and Yemen was announced later in 2017 (New York University 2017). In the wake of the travel ban, thirty-two higher education organizations submitted an amicus brief on Trump vs. Hawaii, stating that the Presidential Proclamation of the travel ban put at risk the financial, educational, social, and cultural benefits that international exchange bring to the US and to American higher education (Fields 2018). The overall numbers of international students in the US have certainly shown a decline (Redden 2017b) after years of rising steadily, “amid widespread concern that prospective new students could be deterred by the current political climate and uncertainty about immigration policies in the United States” (Redden 2018c). After the 2016 presidential election, over 250 colleges and universities joined the #YouAreWelcomeHere campaign to offset the political and cultural negativity and to allay international student concerns about difficult US immigration procedures (Redden 2017a). In protest against the travel ban, many foreign scholars have declined to attend US conferences. Higher education scholars are concerned that prospective international students and faculty in general, whether from Muslim-majority nations or not, have negative perceptions of the US as “unwelcoming or unsafe”, with ambiguous and difficult visa policies (Redden 2018b). In this political climate, Canadian universities have successfully lured faculty away from American universities (Redden 2018a). Students have suffered in the current ideological milieu due to its implications for everyday life, academic work, travel, and visas. Even before the travel ban in 2012, over 400 New York faculty demanded an end to the NYPD’s stop-and-frisks and surveillance of Muslims, explaining how an anti-Muslim climate harmed their students: Students ask in class if they are being spied on. They tell us in private of their fears about speaking in class. They come to office hours in tears because they now look with suspicion at new members of the Muslim Student Association for fear they might be the police, and that is not the way they want to look at other Muslims. And they, Muslim and non-Muslim students, courageously speak out and begin to organize against the police practices and the climate they foster – and they welcome faculty to join them. (Sassen and Theoharis 2012)

Stigma and covering: being Muslim on campus In Shabana’s research, documented in her book Muslim American Women on Campus: Undergraduate Social Life and Identity, Shabana examined how state surveillance and a global stigmatization of Muslims as terrorists have significantly hurt Muslim college students’ psychosocial well-being. Though stigma against Islam is not new to the US, she found that Muslims are targets of bigotry, discrimination, and ignorance, and widely stigmatized for their religious affiliation and 303

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practices even in universities widely regarded as bastions of liberal diversity. There is pervasive ignorance about Islam and Muslims, against a background of Whiteness, anti-faith secularity, and Islamophobic racism, among college students and many faculty. Shabana conducted ethnographic research in the continually lengthening shadow of state surveillance. Some of her research participants had close friends and acquaintances in the Washington, DC area who had been criminalized and harassed after the 9/11 attacks in “Operation Green Quest”. Right-wing US discourse has long featured a suspicion of Muslims who “assimilate” into the community. Accordingly, well-known Muslims with a commitment to working with the government and local communities were tarred by distant association with charities, causes, and individuals. Law enforcement officers showed up at the home of a family Shabana has known for years, and without identifying themselves properly, treated the family like criminals, trained a weapon on the 17-year-old girl, and handcuffed her and her mother for four hours (Gerstein 2007). Such actions by law enforcement, along with a global “War on Terror”, led to an atmosphere of fear among Muslim college students. Hijab-wearing women and other visibly Muslim students are at particular risk of being targets of bigotry, prejudice, and racialized sexism. The stigma of being Muslim can also mar the quality of students’ classroom learning. Latifa, a hijab-wearing Muslim student, reported that whenever topics related to Muslims cropped up in classes, heads turned toward her, and she realized she was “in the hot seat, the designated Muslim spokesperson who must consistently voice the prototypical Muslim standpoint” (Mir 2014, p. 92). Muslims students felt like they were forced to speak for all Muslims everywhere, especially terrorists and militants who are over-represented in the news. Muslim students are assumed to possess a fundamental set of characteristics in common with a worldwide religious group – a tendency to violence and fanaticism, for example – and “the awareness of this stereotype can inflict symbolic violence and inwardly reduce the stereotyped individual” (Mir 2014, p. 34). This meant that Muslim students are stigmatized and defined even before they have an opportunity to open their mouths. The destructive power of such pervasive assumptions on post-adolescents cannot be understated. Though being visibly Muslim – due to hijab, for example – can obligate students to represent Islam, these hijab-wearing students’ views on Islam and Muslims are often taken less seriously than those of women who do not wear hijab. Non-Muslim peers often perceive hijab-wearing Muslims as blind followers of faith and community, with “excessive” religious commitment, while Muslim women who do not wear hijab are often perceived as nominally Muslim, or “just like us” (Mir 2014, p. 92). Because the pressure to represent all Muslims, the governments of Muslim-majority nations, and the diverse cultural practices of Muslim cultures generates mental distress and stress for Muslim students, it is no surprise that Muslim American students frequently play down Islamic affiliation and religiosity. In previous writings, Shabana demonstrated how Muslim students navigate drinking culture on college campuses, selectively playing religiosity up or down (Mir 2009a, 2009b, 2009c). For Muslim students who seek camaraderie on campus, downplaying Muslim religiosity is a common strategy, for instance, for the sake of camaraderie that is conditional upon participation in alcohol culture. At times they drink or go out of their way to socialize in bars, clubs, and parties, arguing that this attempt to insert themselves into non-preferred activities is part of an American cultural assimilationist journey of give-and-take. But, as some of Shabana’s research participants noted, “peripheral participation” in alcohol culture creates awkward encounters where the camaraderie Muslims experience is shallow, and their religiosity may be compromised. When Muslims refuse to attend wet parties and bars, they often find that camaraderie in the larger peer culture (outside the Muslim “bubble”) is closed to them. One of Shabana’s research participants, Fatima, for example, affirmed the importance of keeping Muslim beliefs about alcohol low-key 304

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and remarked that Muslims should not express their strong disapproval of intoxicants to their peers. Amira, when she requested juice instead of beer, made sure not to state explicitly that she was a religious teetotaler; this was not mere personal politeness, but a strategy developed to offset the stereotype of Muslims as uptight outsiders. Someone who was negative about alcohol might not get invited to parties again (Mir 2014). Being Muslim can even harm one’s professional future. Yasmin, in apprehension of how her Muslim background could potentially damage her career prospects, attempted to tone down her Muslim identity by requesting non-Muslim references. She argued that her influence as a Muslim was greater if she were inside mainstream dominant culture. “Can you really change things from outside the system?” she asked (Mir 2014, p. 174). Unfortunately, for many Muslim students, the luxury of authentic identities, of being “free to be” is not always available to them; many of them “cover” (Goffman 1963) their Muslim religiosity, hoping that a cultural sea-change would render them safe one day. It was in 2003 that Yasmin expressed the hope that being part of the system, even if slightly undercover, would yield better results. Fifteen years later, under President Trump’s Islamophobic administration, the children of my research participants are being reared under the same fear, with the same tenuous hope. As students like Yasmin understand that the acceptance they receive is always at risk, they often treat their own Muslim identities as dangerous, or a pollutant, or something to be concealed or disguised. But if they do so, they may indeed comply with dominant racist demands, becoming entirely assimilated and invisible as Muslims, internalizing some level of Islamophobia. In invisibility lies safety. In liminality one may conduct one’s identity work in relative security. Yet when the individual regards his or her own attributes as “defiling” (Goffman 1963: 7), how genuine can such safety be? Muslim American women treated Muslim modesty, courtship, and teetotalism like dirty secrets, contaminations that reduced their normalcy quotient in campus culture. (Mir 2014, pp. 173–174) Not all Muslim students choose the path of “covering” their identities for safety. Some, like Amber, a Muslim student group officer, argued that the time for safety was no more, and she was compelled, despite her discomfort with perpetual activism, to be outspoken about being Muslim and against Islamophobic state policies. No one else is going to do it for us and we’re just going to be stomped on. And yes, it’s constant pressure, but if I don’t do it then I’m not going to respect myself. . . . There’s a handful who care. And the rest, . . . they don’t do anything about it. . . . They’ll be like, . . . “They [law enforcement and intelligence] are all going to take us all”. . . . But they’re not going to do anything. . . . It [apathy] is a way to protect themselves too. . . . (Amber, quoted in Mir 2014, p. 174) Amber perceived the strategy of the “undercover” Muslims as apathetic and selfish. But her own strategy of being “loud Muslim” was in part inescapable, a choice made for her because she was already hijab-wearing and visibly Muslim. “Apathetic” or “covered” Muslims operate as individuals, hoping to survive the storm. Visibly identifiable Muslims are already seen as mainly Muslim, so their main strategy is to work publicly and collectively with other Muslims. As the 305

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political climate worsens, some visibly Muslim students see no option other than to abandon the “Americanization” endeavor of respectability politics. Students like Amber seek out the safety of the Muslim student community. Muslim student groups often play a role in providing a space where Muslims can safely be religious and find social support. Muslim students can find comfort in these groups, pray and observe Ramadan together, and indulge in some insider Muslim jokes. The Muslim sorority Mu Delta Alpha, for example, was created as just such as a space to develop Muslim identity as well as a professional network for women’s leadership (Hamdan 2017). The dry fraternity, Alpha Lambda Mu, also seeks to provide a space for Muslim men to adhere to Islamic values as well as find brotherhood in the community (Svokos 2017). But some Muslim students interrogate the “insularity” of such strategies, arguing that a “cushioned” experience “can make it easy for you to live in an insulated world, where everyone you know doesn’t drink” (Mir 2014, pp. 218–219). Ultimately, Amira contended, Muslims have to live in “the real world”, where they are stereotyped and their religiosity is marginalized. Though many White students spend their entire college careers (and lives) blithely ignoring their non-White peers without any accusations of insularity, it is the brown or black enclaves that are marked as dangerous and wrong. The White enclave is normal; the White enclave is “the real world” to which Muslim students must adapt.

Solidarity and resistance After patient reliance on liberal politics of evolutionary change in this “real world”, supported by trust in the apparent “niceness” of politicians like Barack Obama, the Trump administration’s overt racism, anti-immigrant policies, and Islamophobia have resulted in a cultural shift in marginalized US communities. Post-9/11 a vast number of Muslim Americans spoke up to clear the name of Muslims and Islam from the assumed taint of terrorism, misogyny, and violence. Though Muslim American students still often “cover up” the stigma of Muslim identity, the post-Trump era has featured many more voices that reject the necessity of Muslim apologetics, and demand an end to racism without explaining why Muslims should be treated humanely. While Muslim American identity in the 1990s and early 2000s tended to be inward-looking, or primarily focused on “Muslim” interests, the “Islam is peace” explanations embedded in upwardly mobile Muslim communities are being drowned out by Muslim demands that the US government cease mistreating Muslims and other marginalized populations, both domestically and internationally. Muslim Americans are developing stronger and more coherent solidarity with Blacks, Latino, Native Americans, immigrants more generally, and gender and economic activists. The Black Lives Matter movement has played a central role in a larger critical movement against predatory capitalism, economic oppression, the prison industrial complex, authoritarianism, and Whiteness. In Chicago, Black, Muslim, and Latino students organized such an imposing “Stop Trump” protest that Donald Trump canceled his election campaign rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago in March 2016. UIC faculty also wrote to the administration, opposing the rally (Linthicum and Kurtis 2016). Despite the abiding relevance of the ethnographic analysis in this chapter, a defiant, more intersectional (though not new) Muslim American movement is developing in the form of alliances in the form of protests, demonstrations, and policy demands at colleges and universities. Among the signs of this movement is a learning resource, collectively constructed by several university scholars, known as the “Islamophobia is Racism” syllabus. The syllabus, unlike many educational frameworks, rejects liberal schema where racism, sexism, misogyny, and Islamophobia are individual or inter-personal problems that can simply be resolved by educating people to be “kind” or civil. 306

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Even the term “Islamophobia”, despite its general utility, tends to indicate that the problem is a personal one, based in fear, and “obscures the structural and systemic production of antiMuslim racism”. Conceptually, a focus on anti-Muslim racism is connected to an analysis of history and forms of dominance – from white supremacy, slavery and settler colonialism, to multiculturalism and the security logics of war and imperialism – that produce various forms of racial exclusion as well as incorporation into racist structures. Our primary focus is on the manifestation and impact of anti-Muslim racism in the United States. At the same time, this syllabus insists on thinking about anti-Muslim racism as a global project that overlaps and intersects with the exclusion of other marginalized groups (e.g. Black, queer, Latinx, immigrant, indigenous, etc.). It also connects the histories of various racial logics that reinforce one another, including anti-Muslim racism, anti-Black racism, anti-Latinx racism, anti-Arab racism, and anti-South Asian racism (Abdul Khabeer et al. 2018). As Hammer (2013) contends, “Islamophobia is not about innate or natural fear of Islam or Muslims. Rather, it is an ideological construct produced and reproduced at the intersection of imperial ideology, political expediency, and the exploitation of nationalist, racial, and religious insecurities.” Despite the growth of an intersectional movement that connects marginalized and under-represented groups and communities in the United States, this is not a moment for unchecked optimism, as the politics of White supremacy are securely in power under the Trump administration. Still, perhaps thanks to the rampant racism of this overtly anti-liberal establishment, there is potential for solidarity among a broad resistance movement to yield rich fruits in terms of systemic anti-racism. On campus (and beyond), solidarity with Muslims against Trump’s travel ban became a focal point of a US politics of resistance, symbolized by the large gathering of activists and pro bono lawyers at airports to assist Muslim emigrants in the wake of the first travel ban. With growing collaboration among different marginalized groups, with social media increasingly connecting scholarly critique with activism, especially student activism, academia promises to be a fruitful location to address a larger, encompassing politics of exclusion and nativism, of which Islamophobia is a part.

Conclusion We have documented in our chapter the ways in which Islamophobia is manifested in US education, the multi-layered damage that this inflicts on educational participants, and the strategies that generate hope for fighting Islamophobia and racism. Education in the United States is fraught with contested and contradictory policies and practices for many of students, educators, and educational institutions at all levels. With the ever-increasing number of Muslim people who are displaced and seek refuge in the United States and elsewhere because of on-going wars and conflicts in the Middle East, Near East, Southeast Asia, and Africa, it is all the more crucial to dismantle chronic anti-Muslim sentiment, action, practice, and policy such that both local and global solutions can be implemented. Education for all can only continue to work in the United States if democratic principles for education and people’s well-being continue to be enacted, supported, and practiced daily and across political and ideological differences.

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Muir, S. and Zine, J. 2018 [1999]. Anti-Islamophobia: Curriculum Guide, Secondary Level. Mentors. http:// mentorscanada.com. New York University. 2017. Students affected by travel ban executive order. Retrieved 26 September 2017 from www.nyu.edu/students/communities-and-groups/students-affected-january-2017-executiveorder.html. Oliphant, J. and Whitesides, J. 2015. For Republican presidential candidates, war rolls easily off the tongue. Retrieved 9 December 2015 from www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-war-id USKBN0TS16420151209. Pew Research Center 2009. Views of Religious Similarities and Differences: Muslims Widely Seen as Facing Discrimination. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Ravitz, J. 2009. Muslim in America: A voyage of discovery. Cable News Network, 9 February. Retrieved from www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/02/09/muslims.america. Redden, E. 2017a. #YouAreWelcomeHere. Retrieved 18 August 2017 from www.insidehighered.com/ news/2017/08/18/eastern-michigan-and-other-universities-tell-international-students. Redden, E. 2017b. New international enrollments decline. Retrieved 13 November 2017 from www. insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/13/us-universities-report-declines-enrollments-new-internationalstudents-study-abroad. Redden, E. 2018a. Poaching talent from US. Retrieved 30 March 2018 from www.insidehighered.com/ news/2018/03/30/canada-announces-24-scholars-recruited-worldwide-many-top-american-universities. Redden, E. 2018b. A year of travel bans. Retrieved 1 February 2018 from www.insidehighered.com/ news/2018/02/01/year-later-trump-administrations-travel-restrictions-opposed-many-higher-ed-are. Redden, E. 2018c. International student numbers decline. Retrieved 22 January 2018 from www. insidehighered.com/news/2018/01/22/nsf-report-documents-declines-international-enrollmentsafter-years-growth. Rizga, C. 2016. The chilling rise of Islamophobia in our schools: accusations, beatings, even death threats – that’s life for Muslim kids in America. Retrieved 28 May 2018 from www.motherjones.com/ politics/2016/01/bullying-islamophobia-in-american-schools/#. Sacchetti, M. 2013. Embassies, Islamic groups fear attacks against Muslims. Retrieved 19 April 2013 from www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/04/18/embassies-islamic-groups-fear-attacks-against-muslimsand-others-following-marathon-bombing/kSkRZRAekXZO1uq3cLLCFK/story.html. Sarroub, L. K. 2005. All American Yemeni Girls: Being Muslim in a Public School. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Sarroub, L. K. 2007. Seeking refuge in literacy from a scorpion bite. Ethnography and Education, 2(3): 365–380. Sassen, S. and Theoharis, J. 2012. Faculty to Bloomberg: tell your police chief to go. Retrieved 6 March 2012 from www.chronicle.com/article/Faculty-to-Bloomberg-Tell/131087. Schelkopf, E. 2018. Alleged hazing victim sues Wheaton College, accused players. Retrieved 19 March 2018 from www.mysuburbanlife.com/2018/03/16/alleged-hazing-victim-sues-wheaton-collegeaccused-players/ahd12si. Sharpe, J. 2016. Muslim woman told to “hang yourself” with her headscarf. Retrieved 28 May 2019 from www.ajc.com/news/local/muslim-gwinnett-teacher-told-hang-yourself-with-her-headscarf/ XVrOecQFQRbKc7SuggJMtI. Stancill, J. 2016. Sister of slain UNC student: “Let’s end the hate”. Retrieved 14 November 2016 from www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article114780553.html. Svokos, A. 2015. Inside a Muslim fraternity: no alcohol, but plenty of community service. Huffington Post, 7 April. Wermund, B. 2018. Trump blamed as US colleges lure fewer foreign students. Retrieved 23 April 2018 from www.politico.com/story/2018/04/23/foreign-students-colleges-trump-544717. Wong, Q. 2017. Sudanese student at Stanford detained, handcuffed at JFK airport. Retrieved 28 January 2017 from www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/28/stanford-university-student-detained-atjfk-airport-for-five-hours-after-trumps-immigration-order/. Zine, J. 2004. Anti-Islamophobia education as transformative pedagogy: reflections from the educational front lines. The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 21(3): 110–119. Zine, J. 2006. Unveiled sentiments: gendered Islamophobia and experiences of veiling among Muslim girls in a Canadian Islamic school. Equity & Excellence in Education, 39(3).

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Part IV

Responding to Islamophobia

25 Micro-level management of Islamophobia Negotiation, deflection and resistance Fatima Khan and Gabe Mythen

Introduction This chapter will address the issue of anti-Muslim victimisation and the intensification of an Islamophobic climate in Britain over the last two decades. With reference to empirical data drawn from a qualitative study conducted in the northwest of England, we wish to elucidate a range of micro-level strategies used by British Muslims to prevent, circumvent and challenge discrimination in their daily lives. In order to do so, it is necessary to discuss the social, cultural and political environment that renders Islam and its British followers suspect and makes concentrated identity management techniques essential for Muslims living in Britain today. Sociological research undertaken since 2001 suggests British Muslims have been subjected to over a decade and a half of multi-layered hostility, from widespread and increasingly normalised anti-Muslim political rhetoric (Ansari and Hafez 2012; Yilmaz 2012) to biased, discriminatory media discourses (Ahmed and Matthes 2016; Allen 2012; Moore, Mason and Lewis 2008; Poole 2002) and security and counter-terrorism policies built on the assumption that all British Muslims are either at risk of radicalisation or potential terrorists (Nabulsi 2017; Kundnani 2015). We will argue in this chapter that it is these three interrelated and mutually reinforcing social processes that have increased the vulnerability of British Muslims. We begin by outlining the institutional networks through which Islamophobia thrives, focussing on the media, the political realm and legal and policy frameworks. Having set the context, we go on to draw on experiential vignettes to illuminate some of the practices common to young Muslims as they seek to negotiate and consolidate their identities in a labile and troubling environment.

Defining the institutional context: the making up of Muslims While ethnic minorities have long suffered macro- and micro-level aggressions, British Muslims were designated in the mainstream mass media as unwilling to assimilate in the wake of the Salman Rushdie Affair in the late 1980s (Meer 2013). At this juncture, concerns about Rushdie’s provocative and defamatory re-telling of the origins of Islam were largely brushed aside and recast as the ‘uncivilised’ attitudes of ‘barbarians’ and ‘dangerous fanatics’. Although, the publication of The Satanic Verses marked Muslims out as ‘different’, Kundnani (2015) avers 313

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that the violence in northern mill towns in 2001 served as a watershed moment at which British Muslims were identified as particularly problematic. Dominant discourses suggested that Muslims required both scrutiny and encouragement to assimilate more readily, rather than being allowed to live in parallel communities. In the years that have followed a series of terrorist attacks in the UK, Europe and North America committed by Islamist extremists have served to entrench anti-Muslim ideologies and attitudes. It is the deleterious effects of discourses which depict Muslims as a homogeneous, ‘risky’ group that we wish to detail here, by focussing in turn on the media, politics and security policies. In terms of the sphere of politics, it is important to note extreme right, anti-immigration political movements have long been part of the landscape. Historically, the far right have focused on Jews and Judaism, but in recent years this attention has been re-directed towards Muslims and Islam. Ansari and Hafez (2012) argue that the far right view that Islam and Muslim values fundamentally conflict with Western values has been co-opted to different degrees by both liberal and conservative parties and woven into the policies of Western governments over the past two decades. Kelly (2011) reports the extent of normalisation of anti-Muslim sentiments which led Conservative cabinet minister Baroness Warsi to assert that ‘Islamophobia has now crossed the threshold of middle class respectability . . . it has passed the dinner party test’. Political parties from across the spectrum have articulated concerns about the cultural threat posed by Muslims and calls for immigration controls specifically targeted at migration from the Muslim world are commonplace (Hogan and Haltinner 2015). Yilmaz (2012) claims it is this very debate that has expedited the rise of the far right through two simultaneous processes. First, it has enabled rightwing parties to gain public support and has forced mainstream parties to the right. Second, it has re-structured the political landscape and aligned social and political movements along the axis of culture; a factor that is represented as central to issues, not only of citizenship and belonging, but also security and economy. The far-right have been successful in keeping the national focus on these multiple ‘drawbacks’ of Muslim citizenry with a particular focus on the threat to ‘British values’. Founded on a generalised suspicion of Muslims, this political vision strands across formal politics, unifying ‘the people’ against the Muslim ‘other’ (Wodak 2011). This trend is similarly observed by Lucassen and Lubbers (2011) who argue that perceived cultural ethnic threats are a stronger predictor of far-right preferences than perceived economic ethnic threats. As problematic Muslim difference takes center stage in political narratives, discourses recounting historic social divisions coalesce and unify against the Muslim ‘other’. Such findings have led some commentators to assert that the success of the far-right is of hegemonic proportions (Mondon 2015; Yilmaz 2012). That is not to say that their narrative is without its detractors, instead that sameness and difference in culture is the defining element of society. In other words, the far right has established an epistemology of what constitutes the most important aspects of social life to align with their own Islamophobic perspective. According to Mondon (2015) the enduring triumph is ideological, with far-right discourse now prevalent within mainstream liberal democratic agendas. Far right ideology is no longer the preserve of the political fringe, but has become meshed with policies from across the political spectrum (Ansari and Hafez 2012; Yilmaz 2012; Fekete 2006). The national security agenda and its attendant narrative of Islam as a threat is illustrative of this and constitutes the second of the three discursive contexts that frame British Muslim lives to be discussed here. The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 is the sixth addition to a raft of counter-terrorism legislation introduced since the 2000 Terrorism Act sequentially carried through by successive Labour, Coalition and Conservative governments. The national security agenda allows mass surveillance and control of movement while restricting pluralism in favour of social cohesion through assimilation and extensive scrutiny of all British Muslims in 314

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the formal service of ‘public good’ (Kundnani 2015). Such policies reinforce the extreme right’s opposition to not only militant Islam, but to Islam and Muslims as a whole, on the grounds that Muslim ‘difference’ and presence is problematic for a unified, liberal democracy. Consistency between the security policies of successive governments from across the political divide can clearly be seen in the ‘conveyor belt’ theory that underpins British counter-radicalisation strategy. As Kundnani (2015) explains, since 2006 the philosophy underpinning State counter terrorism policies in the UK has assumed a linear, mechanical process of radicalisation by which an individual is propelled from religious conservativism to extremism. This is particularly evident in the Prevent policy, which attempts to deploy ‘risk focused’ prevention measures to govern terrorism pre-emptively (see McCulloch and Pickering 2010; Mythen, Walklate and Peatfield 2016). The Prevent strategy allows the government to police future crimes that do not yet exist, but may be in the making, through surveillance of entire communities who are ‘at risk of being risky’ (Heath-Kelly 2013). While the policy is designed to be ‘community led’ and driven by intelligence freely given from within the British Muslim community, both the designated ‘priority areas’ and allocations of Prevent funding suggest that areas with large Muslim populations have been targeted (Kundnani 2009). In practice the implementation of counter terrorism and security policies has involved the assumption that Muslim communities have the capacity to foster the ideologies that support extremism because they do not vocally celebrate ‘British values’. This assumption serves to ideationally discipline Muslims, encouraging them to assimilate and embody those values. In order to do, multiculturalism of the past is rejected in favour of a muscular defence and promotion of a monocultural Britishness (Meer et al. 2010). To this end, the government has urged commentators, journalists, academics and the general public to become more forceful in defending ‘Britishness’ (Kundnani 2015). Concomitantly, the introduction of new Prevent duty guidance in 2015 legally responsibilises professionals working in education, healthcare and welfare to identify the ‘tell-tale’ signs of radicalisation and to report those deemed to be ‘risky’ (see Nabulsi 2017; Mythen 2015). Government statistics for those referred from the first year since the duty guidance was introduced are troubling. Reporting on Home Office statistics, Versi (2016) notes Muslims, particularly young children are overreferred, with one in 500 subjected to Prevent measures in 2015–2016, a fact that is rooted in the design of the strategy rather than its implementation. Despite widespread suspicion of Muslims, the assumption that radicalisation is rooted in Islam is without evidence. As Travis (2008) notes, the UK’s own intelligence agencies have long rejected this thesis. As far back as 2008 an MI5 report analysing the behaviour of several hundred convicted terrorists ascertained that most lacked religious literacy. Indeed, in opposition to State understandings of radicalisation rooted in ‘conveyor belt’ theory, the evidence suggests that well-established religious identities actually protect against propensity toward violent extremism. More recently, reporting on a review of a biographical database of 100 people involved in terrorism in Europe, Roy (2017) concluded that those who fall into violent extremism do not descend into violence through reading the Qur’an, or even adhering to conservative interpretations. Again, the evidence inverts governmental philosophy to note that paucity of religious knowledge and a proclivity toward hedonistic ‘western’ lifestyle are common factors among those convicted of terrorist related offences. Regardless of the lack of supporting evidence for the underlying assumptions of the Prevent strategy, it continues to encourage citizens toward surveillance of Muslims. This creates an atmosphere in which Muslims are structurally vilified and anti-Muslim attitudes are not only tolerated, but often celebrated as a form of patriotic protectionism. The third overarching discourse that melds with and ideationally permits preventative counter-terrorism strategies and the mainstreaming of far-right ideology is the representation of 315

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Islam and Muslims in the media. A plethora of empirical studies (see Ahmed and Matthes 2016; Allen 2012; Moore, Mason and Lewis 2008; Poole 2002) demonstrate that negative stereotypes of Muslims are commonplace based on Islamophobic discourses in media representation of Muslims. Ahmed and Matthes’s (2016) meta-study shows that Muslims are predominantly negatively framed, with Islam being portrayed as a violent religion. Allen’s review of such large-scale content studies concludes that Muslims are habitually associated with social problems and generally portrayed as threatening. Allen’s (2012, p. 9) analysis shows that the most common nouns associated with Islam and Muslims were ‘terrorist’, ‘extremist’, ‘Islamist’, ‘suicide bomber’ and ‘militant’. According to research developed at the University of Cambridge presented at the House of Lords in January 2017, longstanding, sustained and largely unchallenged mainstream media discourses have contributed to rising hostility towards Muslims in Britain. The report goes on to assert that under-representation of Muslims within journalism does little to tackle media bias with only 0.4% of British journalists being Muslim (Farmanfarmanian 2016). The mainstream media narrative is rooted in the cultural challenge Muslims present to ‘Britishness’, thereby intersecting with and enabling restrictive, targeted counter-terrorism measures that assume British Muslim culture itself breeds terrorism through its rejection of Britishness, which in turn melds with the normalisation of far-right rhetoric that locates Islam and Islamic culture as both alien and corrosive. The three mutually reinforcing social processes described above have been intersecting and crystallising for almost three decades, highlighting the normalisation of anti-Muslim discourse at the institutional level. Crucially, a lack of concentrated institutional action against Islamophobia has afforded a ‘permission to hate’ (Hussein and Poynting 2017, p. 335) at the everyday level, as illustrated by progressively negative public attitudes towards Muslims and in anti-Muslim hate crimes that not only increase year on year, but also peak in the wake of terrorist attacks (Burnett 2016).

Living with the consequences of Islamophobia: managing problematised identities In a socio-political climate in which Islamophobia is prevalent, it is important to examine the impact of media and political discourses on the micro-level interaction strategies that British Muslims deploy to prevent, circumvent and challenge everyday anti-Muslim behaviours. To do this in what follows we will discuss salient findings from a qualitative study conducted in the northwest of England with a sample of 32 young British Pakistani Muslims aged between 18 and 25. The participants were recruited through existing contacts with the community and through snowball sampling thereafter. The study was conducted in two phases, the first involving four focus groups, the second comprising twelve in-depth interviews with participants from the focus group sample. The focus groups allowed participants to discuss sensitive topics in a safe space with peers from the same community, while the semi-structured interviews supported in-depth exploration of issues raised in the focus groups. All of the focus groups and interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and axial encoding was conducted to organise the raw data into ideas, themes and phenomena as they arose (Strauss and Corbin 1997, p. 61). The data analysis process then moved into a second phase where the researchers discussed the emergent patterns and comprehensively compared them to the initial coding labels. This process yielded three micro level interaction strategies British Muslims deploy to prevent, circumvent and challenge everyday anti-Muslim behaviours which we will elaborate here: negotiation, deflection and resistance. The discussion will draw on core concepts from both Homi Bhabha’s (1994) third space thesis and Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) to elucidate the ways in 316

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which identities embedded in more than one cultural experience are performed and managed in an increasing hostile social context. This analysis will highlight the innumerable ways in which British Muslims successfully navigate the frequently conflicting demands of their hyphenated identities, merging their Islamic cultural and religious heritage with displays of Britishness. Sirin and Fine (2008, p. 156) assert Muslims living in the West since the turn of the 21st century must ‘work the hyphen’, carefully deploying strategic behaviours to traverse the contested social and political terrain in which their biographies are set. Here Homi Bhabha’s (1994) work on hybridised identities that exist in an interstitial ‘third space’ is useful. Bhabha alludes to the creative spaces between cultures in which new identities are formed and reformed. For him the third space is not a neutral territory in which cultures mix in equal parts with equal value. Rather it is a space that is saturated by power relations and one in which existing inequalities and imbalances are embodied by the actors within it, resulting in ‘unequal and uneven forces of cultural representation’ (Bhabha 1994, p. 245). Social hierarchies of contemporary Britain are mirrored in the third space and necessitate strategies concerned with performance management that seek to preserve a coherent and unspoiled self. In the analysis below we draw on the frameworks provided by Bhabha (1994) and Goffmann (1959) to illumine three strategies British Muslim participants in the study used to negotiate everyday situations at the intersection points between Islamic cultural heritage and British identities. First, the chapter identifies the practice of negotiation, a strategy that combats everyday Islamophobia by using reasoned argument and a tolerant attitude. When governed by negotiation, individuals act as envoys for their religion, embodying and furthering greater understanding between British Muslims and wider society. Second, deflection is highlighted as a manoeuvre that allows the individual to avoid potentially difficult social interactions through concealment and strategic omissions. Third, we outline the elements of strategies of resistance, a tactic deployed when neither negotiation nor deflection is deemed appropriate and a robust defence of Islamic identity is warranted. It should be noted from the outset that although these categories are separated for analytical purposes they are not mutually exclusive in practice, being employed together or individually depending on the particular social context. The first of these, negotiation, designates the British Muslim self as ambassador for Islam, adopting an attitude of tolerance and using reasoned argument to break down barriers, misconceptions and stereotypes, in short to present Islam positively. This strategy can take various forms, inter alia: embodying the cohesiveness of Islam and ‘British values’ by ‘performing normalcy’, an expression of ‘reactive pride’ for Islam and its values against sustained vilification, a mission to educate rooted in an authoritative understanding on the position of Islamic teachings coupled with expertise on global Muslim affairs. Each of these manifestations will be discussed in the context of participant experiences. One function of being an ambassador for Islam is to accentuate the cohesiveness of Islam and ‘Britishness’ by emphasising how Muslims are no different to individuals of other faiths. These acts, which we dub, ‘performing normalcy’, are connected to the wider practice of ‘performing safety’ (Mythen, Walklate and Khan 2009, p. 749) which is a type of self-regulation geared toward signposting the self as ‘safe’ to reduce the risk of victimisation. While this concept is concerned with diminishing the enunciation of Islam in interaction, including minimising outward cultural displays; moderating the use of Urdu in certain public contexts, removing traditionally Islamic clothing and consciously refusing to be drawn into contentious political debates. To this end, ‘performing normalcy’ amplifies similarities and attenuates differences in an attempt to undermine the ‘othering’ of British Muslims. The following focus group conversation among university students shows how they use their personal experiences and biographies to highlight consistencies between Islam and Britishness, with the aim of undermining popular perceptions. 317

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Rabiya: I think that’s just a part of life now. You have to try to fit in as best you can, don’t you? You have to try to show people we’re no different to them really. Zialdin: We are the same. I don’t really see any difference between me and most people I know. I’m Muslim, yeah, and yeah I do some things that they don’t do, like when I pray, but that’s private. So, there’s no real difference between us. Rehana: I know what you’re saying, but we are different, normal differences like the differences between one group of white people from another or how white people are different to black people. It doesn’t mean we can’t get on. I use that in arguments, you know: ‘tell me how we are different?’ They never can though, because we’re more the same than different. Here, the students echo essentialist discourses when claiming ‘we are all the same’ to challenge the stereotype of Muslims as problematically different. Spivak (1988) describes this as ‘strategic essentialism’; behaviour deployed by minority groups to resist negative stereotypes through minimising inter-group differences and highlighting shared characteristics. Here the strategy is used to lay claim to a Britishness that crosses cultural and religious difference, thereby redressing the notion that Islam is profoundly at odds with liberal democracies. The impetus for using negotiation as a strategy in daily interactions is not confined to selfprotection against discrimination (Mythen, Walklate and Khan 2009) or a desire to embody the cohesiveness of Islam and Britishness. It is rooted in a strong feeling of pride in Muslim heritage. Since the Rushdie affair of the late 1980s, Islam and its values that have been steadily denigrated while sustained and legitimised attacks have increased feelings of victimisation and marginalisation in the community (Zempi and Awan 2017). Negotiation in daily interactions is an opportunity for young British Muslims to redress identity balance through a phenomenon identified by Modood (2005, p. 292) as ‘reactive pride identity’. This constitutes intentional adoption of stigmatised social status as a reaction practised in the face of discrimination. In this case a British Muslim identity that voluntarily embraces and proudly displays Islamic identity as a reaction to domestic and global victimisation of the ummah. This is clearly illustrated in the following conversation between a group of young Muslim women discussing pride as a reaction to denigration and a desire to represent that pride in Islamic heritage by appearing unmistakably Muslim. Basanti: In the past, I hated anyone saying anything about my scarf. I’d really go on the defensive. Now though, I realise that’s my opportunity to stand up for myself, put people right about Islam. I show them I’m proud of being a Muslim, and that’s why I wear it. It’s become more about showing the world I’m Muslim and I don’t care. Pia: It’s hard, but I’m sick of always having to be nice about it. Sometimes I just want to say, ‘and what? It’s a scarf, deal with it.’ It’s not about what they think. It’s up to us to speak out. Who else is going to talk about it, or anything to do with Muslims if we don’t? At the end of the day it’s us who know about Islam and what it means. Both Basanti and Pia respond to their designated status by adopting the stigma symbol that marks them out as ‘other’. By refusing all attempts to locate the veil as a symbol of Islamic patriarchy, Pia and Basanti re-claim and socially re-position it and thus themselves as veiled women that exist outside of disparaging normative discourses. Increasing identification to a socially group can alleviate the effects of stigma by tapping into the positive feelings of pride. Not only do such behaviours counter everyday Islamophobia, positive identification with Islam acts as a psychological barrier against the incessant cultural denigration of Islam in the media, thereby protecting the self from castigation. This assertion is consolidated by Abu-Rayya et al’s study 318

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that reported a positive relationship between accentuating Islam’s positive attributes and wellbeing among Muslims (Abu Rayya et al. 2016). Pia also raises an interesting point about in-depth knowledge of Islam and Muslim affairs. She claims being an ‘expert’ in daily interactions generates a self-confidence from which to lead discussions and challenge stereotypes. The following conversation segueways with Pia’s assertions: Abid: I’m always surprised by how little most people know about Islam. But they always have to have an opinion, don’t they. I don’t want to say they’re all ignorant, but yeah most of them are. I’m sure they get everything from the media. It’s not from having Muslim friends or spending time in Muslim countries. I bet they get all their information from other white people, what they’ve seen written about Muslims, or from friends when they’re out drinking. Sajid: Yeah white people, writing lies for other white people. You know that thing about ignorance, that’s why I have to speak up. They don’t want to know about what’s happened in the Middle East, about how wealth here is built on Muslim backs. Most people don’t even know their own history and how Muslims fit into that. When you hear that sort of crap you have to say something. I almost feel it’s my duty to put people straight. Sirin and Fine’s study (2008) which examined young Muslims daily lives in the American context, concluded that religious and cultural expertise allows individuals to confidently correct everyday fallacies about Islamic teachings. Here both Abid and Sajid express a confidence in their advanced knowledge of Muslim geo-politics and Islamic scripture that provides them with a solid platform from which to subvert everyday rehearsal of normative discourses. Having explored how British Muslims identities are forged in a third space through negotiation, our empirical study suggests that cognate strategies of deflection are also frequently mobilised. Strategies of deflection are somewhat similar to negotiation in that they require a degree of acceptance of anti-Muslim sentiment. However, while negotiation embraces ‘Muslimness’ to subvert common stereotypes, deflection necessarily requires the actor to distance the self from the stigmatised social status of being Muslim. In this way, deflection strategies allow British Muslims to circumvent uncomfortable discussions or potential victimisation through omitting mention of personal values, religious beliefs and certain cultural practices. Deflection can thus be understood as a transitory form of ‘mimicry’ (Bhabha 1994, p. 86). It acts as a form of emulation that appears when members of a colonised society imitate and take on aspects of the culture of former colonisers. Yet, rather than being an act of direct coercion, the actor performs a double articulation, whereby the ‘other’ is appropriated for power as she or he visualises it. Deflection is a type of mimicry that is space and time contingent and has the specific purpose of controlling and guiding particularly tricky face to face interactions to avoid both conflict and ruptures in performance. While mimicry is an act, deflection can be defined as an action and a strategic tactic. An individual might actively blend in, by speech or action as discussed above, or may choose to employ a silence or omission of personal characteristics or beliefs in order to avoid disrupting immediate impression management. Here we discuss accounts that show an appearance of being the same as non-Muslims, not by emulation but by muting difference. In our analysis, deflection is a performance management strategy that takes two forms. First, it facilitates transitions between different social situations. Second, it serves as a method of conflict avoidance during interactions operationalised via self-censorship in speech and demeanour. These strategies allow the actor to perform different personas across social situations that appear incongruent, while at the same time maintaining coherent internal beliefs and values. 319

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The discussion in the previous section shows Pia and Basanti embracing the social stigma attached to the hijab to display pride in their Muslim identities. They invite discussions with the purpose of challenging negative stereotypes that associate veiling with patriarchal oppression. By way of contrast, in the account below deflection rather than engagement is used negotiate an identity built on diverging belief systems. Aafreen chooses to deflect negative associations by simply removing the headscarf, effectively breaking any association between her and the imposed stigma otherwise associated with veiling. Aafreen: I don’t really have any choice but wear a scarf to college, but I always take it off if I’m going out afterwards. Its okay to wear it at home and stuff, but it’s easier not to when you’re out some places. People always have something to say and most of the time I can’t be bothered to deal with it. So I don’t. I just make sure I put it on before I go home, just to avoid any trouble. Why make trouble for yourself? It’s just an easier life, to do what I do. Then I don’t get any hassle anywhere. Aafreen explains how she enhances ‘Muslimness’ around the family and reduces it in the public sphere. It is a self-conscious strategy that allows her to ‘fit in’ and avoid conflict by making a simple change. As Aafreen remarks, ‘it’s just an easier life’. This account illustrates how deflection allows actors a degree of elasticity to selectively reveal or withhold traits to facilitate a smooth transition between social spaces that cross the hyphen. The transition was not confined to clothing choices across social space but also the types of behaviours that were knowingly revealed or exposed in specific contexts. Zialdin: There’s some stuff you’re not going to take home. I never really talk about going out with my friends, where we go or what we get up to. There’s no point. It’s about keeping everything easy. I don’t want to choose who I am, I want to be both. Aafreen and Zialdin’s accounts show how superficial changes allow them to control and tailor performances to each context without altering core identity. Essentially, they mimic the differing norms of each situation without appearing to enter the third space, when in fact recognising that one’s hybridity is a precondition of such an impression management strategy. While this approach appears to be an unproblematic way of managing the transitions ‘across the hyphen’, the above accounts do not fully illuminate the profound impact on an individual’s day to day experience and personal reality. To simply define hybridised identities as fluid and manageable through small changes of performance across the different ‘stages’ of daily interactions elides the negative impacts for the self and the routine but necessary struggles to manage these. Fazal’s account highlights the difficulties involved in negotiating identity in the third space: Fazal: I don’t like doing it, not at all. I feel really bad lying to my family sometimes. I know I’m a different person at home to when I’m out with my friends. I honestly think it would be too hard to deal with, so lying is easier. People always say honesty and all that, but if you’re Muslim it’s sometimes difficult saying the truth. You just can’t do it. I know it’s a crap situation, but it’s just the way it is. Attempts by Muslim youth to negotiate these dualities in the Canadian context has led Zine to propose that some young Muslims display ‘split personality syndrome’ (Zine 2008, p. 4) in that they develop a double persona in efforts to resolve cultural contradictions involved 320

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in living ‘at the hyphen’. Here Fazal illustrates Zines’s assertion suggesting that differences across the hyphen can only be managed through omissions and misrepresentations. In addition, he indicates the deception necessary to manage the hyphen creates feelings of guilt, an assertion that was echoed across the discussions. Participants in the study spoke of ‘compromising’ or ‘hiding’ their beliefs, not ‘being themselves’ or feeling disingenuous. Frequent self-censorship during everyday interactions was chosen as a course of action despite subsequent self-admonishment, shame or guilt. The conversation below highlights the accumulative cost of maintaining an unspoiled social self at the expense of repeatedly repressing aspects of the Muslim self in public. Fazal: I deliberately stay away from talking about Islam and all the controversial stuff. I don’t really like all the confrontation. Some people can’t help but go for you. It’s just afterwards; you know when you feel you’ve let yourself down, let your family down. Then I think I should’ve said something. It’s hard to get rid of that feeling. Adil: I know. Once this friend of mine said something about how they’d watched this documentary and he couldn’t understand why Muslims had to be so violent. His whole argument came down to him believing Islam is violent. I didn’t say anything because I just can’t be bothered arguing. I was the only Muslim there and just couldn’t see the point in trying to challenge him. Anyway, it really stayed with me, that feeling like I’d betrayed everyone. It felt like, all those Muslims who’ve suffered because of the West, and I couldn’t even stand up for myself. It got so I couldn’t stand him anymore. I actually hate him. This discussion reveals frustration, anger and self-recrimination when fundamental aspects of the self are subdued to maintain contextual equilibrium because fluidity of external presentations does not correspond to fluidity of core beliefs and values. In Goffmanian terms, social actors are ‘merchants of morality’ (Goffman 1956, p. 156), as such they define the moral contours of a situation and attempt to convincingly project themselves as moral beings within the definition of that particular situation. Here, acting according to the definition of the situation and its attendant moral norms necessitates the subjugation of core values. The British Muslim actor must deflect a salient part of identity, which renders the hyphenated self insecure, resulting in feelings of regret, shame, and self-admonishment. In this way, the negative impacts of deflection reverse the pride and empowerment that can arise from negotiation strategies that necessitate embracing Islam. Deflection strategies potentially distance the self from Islam and protect against public denigrations of the self. Yet, on the flip side, they simultaneously contribute to feelings of shame associated with denying a salient part of one’s identity. Despite the differences in outcomes, the aim of both these strategies is to avoid ruptures in the sense of a cohesive British Muslim identity. In the final analytical section we discuss resistance as a method deployed in interactions where both negotiation and deflection are deemed inadequate and only a robust and explicit opposition to perceived Islamophobia is suitable. The extracts below highlight how resistance is used as a last resort to tackle persistent anti-Islamic behaviour. Participant’s accounts indicate two main reasons for reticence in using resistance; first, open conflicts rupture daily interactions that are is preserved by negotiation and deflection. Second, the negative impacts of conflict based on accusations of racism endure beyond the timeframe of the initial rupture. Here, Taj describes deploying deflection in order to maintain cordial workplace relations until the point at which resistance became a necessary response to grievous mockery of Islamic culture. 321

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Taj: This woman at work, she kept on saying ‘Well, you’re not like a real Muslim, because you’re allowed to work, you’re allowed to show your hair, you are allowed to go out.’ I didn’t want to argue with her so I left it, for ages. I knew she was a bit racist and I just didn’t want to get into it. Who wants to go to work and end up fighting with people? In the end, she forced me to respond. It happened so often, I ended up telling her she was an ignorant racist. . . . If it was one thing I would’ve stayed quiet, but . . . Now we don’t really speak. It makes situations really awkward. That’s what I didn’t want to happen. Here, Taj resists gendered anti-Islamic stereotypes through confrontation after an extended period of deflection. Her unveiled status is deemed positive in relation to normative Islamophobic representations of veiled women. In positioning Taj as an ‘acceptable’ Muslim, her colleague denigrates both veiled women and Muslims more widely. This extract illustrates the unwillingness to use resistance to both avoid the confrontation itself and its future consequences. Deploying explicit resistance a last resort is echoed by Fazal and Adil in a conversation about playing football at the local sports club. Fazal: How many times did that guy keep saying stuff about Muslims? He couldn’t keep his mouth shut. We spoke about him so many times, about how to ignore it. It went on for weeks. One week it’d be comments like, ‘Why you even here, you lot play cricket?’, then it’d be thinking he was funny by calling us terrorists. When he called my brother Taliban, sorry, I just lost it. Sorry, no. Adil: They just want a bit of controversy. See if they can rile you a bit, get a response from you. In the end they get the reaction they want. But it was us who lost out. We’re the ones who don’t get a game now. In both of the above extracts, resistance is deployed only after deflection has been unsuccessful as a conflict avoidance strategy. Reluctance to engage in conflict around Islam and anti-Muslim racism is enacted to avoid long-term disruptions to social relationships. Yet there are limits to this strategy and consequences when alternative modes of resistance are deemed necessary. In Taj’s case his workplace relationships have suffered, while Adil and Fazal have been excluded from selection for subsequent football matches.

Conclusion The aim of this chapter was to explore the everyday experience of young British Muslims and to contextualise participant narratives in wider ideological discourses that construct Muslims in the UK as ‘other’. In order to do so, the chapter outlined three mutually reinforcing processes that provide the societal backdrop for Muslims lives in the UK; the normalisation of far right ideology, negative representations within an Islamophobic mainstream media that has been largely unregulated over the past three decades and security and counter-terrorism policies that have both targeted Muslims and defined them as simultaneously risky and at risk of radicalisation. Within this broader setting the chapter set out to map everyday strategies used by young British Muslims to negotiate, deflect and resist everyday manifestations of legitimised Islamophobia. In order to illuminate these strategies we have drawn upon data from a study focussed on the daily experiences of British Muslim youth living in the northwest of England. While the testimonies of our participants were varied and diverse, in this chapter we have sought to illumine three fluid forms of identity management that have emerged in the context of a hostile environment. First, we discussed techniques of negotiation, through which 322

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individuals seek to combat everyday Islamophobia by using reasoned argument and adopting a tolerant attitude. In this mode individuals act as envoys for their religion, embodying and furthering greater understanding between British Muslims and wider society. Second, we documented practices of deflection through which participants sought to avoid potentially difficult social interactions through concealment and strategic omissions. Third, we elucidated forms of resistance, a tactic deployed when neither negotiation nor deflection is deemed appropriate and a robust defence of Islamic identity is warranted. As an ensemble, these impression management strategies ensure minimum degradation of the hyphenated self in daily life. Yet, it must be recognised that such intensive identity management is only required as a response to institutionalised ideological processes that have normalised the denigration of Islam and Muslims. It is the ideology that underpins Islamophobia – routinely reproduced in political rhetoric, the mainstream media and within national security policies – that permits hostility against Muslims. Rather than being managed by those subjected to them, such micro acts of everyday aggression must be challenged and eradicated.

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26 Race, racism, Islamophobia in the media Journalists’ perceptions and Muslim responses Amir Saeed

Introduction It is suggested that the representation of Muslims echoes previous research on how minority groups are portrayed in the Western media. In many respects, the media representation of minority groups is a ‘double-edged sword’. First, it marginalises minority voices, thus, they are virtually ignored or invisible (Saeed 2007). Simultaneously actual representation of minority groups is often construed in negative discourses such as problems like terrorism (Ewart et al. 2017). The problematic nature of news media reportage of Islam and Muslims has been a significant focus of research especially in what can be termed Western media. Internationally, there is a growing and miscellaneous mass of research about the news frames, discourses used to report on Islam and Muslims by various Western news media (Ahmed and Matthes 2016; Anderson 2015; Bleich et al. 2015; Moore et al. 2008; Poole and Richardson 2006; Poorebrahim and Reza Zarei 2012; Rane et al. 2014; Richardson 2001). When these frameworks are applied to audiences who have little social contact with minority groups, the role of the media as sole provider (or primary definer; Hall et al. 1978) becomes crucial (van Dijk 1987, 1993). Cottle argues that the media hold a powerful position in conveying, explaining and articulating specific discourses that help represent (and misrepresent) minority groups (Cottle 2000, 2002, 2006). A significant conclusion in previous media research is that much of the mainstream news media reportage of Islam and Muslims comprises stereotypical approaches and generally negative representations of Islam and of Muslims per se as different, strange, and threatening (Saeed 2007). Research from Europe (Law 2015) and the USA (Aked 2015) indicates supports the assertion that Muslims living in the West are increasingly living under a climate of fear and suspicion (Saeed 2015a, 2015b). Thus the news media is a vital source of information for many Westerners about Islam and Muslims, and studies have shown that it shapes and influences how various publics perceive Islam and Muslims. Ewart et al. (2017) researched that this lack of knowledge of Islam and Muslims translates to news media practitioners.

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The chapter provides empirical evidence from journalism, educators and regulators. Here open-ended interviews were conducted with members of the Association of Journalism Education in the UK (AJE), Society of Editors (SoE). The AJE The AJE represents journalism educators at higher education institutions in the United Kingdom and Ireland (http://ajeuk. org). The SOE represents members in national, regional and local newspapers, magazines, broadcasting, digital media, media law and journalism education (www.societyofeditors. org). In addition interviews were conducted with ‘Muslim advocates’. That is individuals, who could be termed ‘gatekeepers’ with significant knowledge and understanding of the concerns of the British Muslim community. These included a member of the The Muslim Association of Britain (www.mabonline.net) and also member of MEND. MEND is a not for profit company working towards enhancing the active engagement of British Muslim communities in our national life, particularly in the fields of politics and the media (http:// mend.org.uk). The interviews were open-ended but the respondents were specifically asked about media representations of Muslims and if this was accurate and how/it can be improved. The participants asked to remain anonymous as they noted that their personal views did not reflect the positions of their various organisations. It should be noted that the right to remain anonymous has not compromised previous research into media representations (O’Neill and Savigny 2014). Concluding, it will be suggested that the suspicion of mainstream media representations of Islam and British Muslims drives many Muslim communities living in the West to employ new media to challenge ‘old’ media representations and assumptions about Islam/Muslims. Therefore to further investigate this aspect. Muslim students from four different Muslim students associations were interviewed in focus groups. All of the students were studying journalism, media or Public Relations. A total 9 students (5 female and 4 male) all British Muslims from a variety of ethnic backgrounds were asked about their views on the mainstream media’s representation of Islam and Muslims.

Context: national and international concerns It has been argued that new forms of racism have emerged within contemporary society (Barker 1981; Gilroy 1993; Mason 2000). Goldberg (1990, p. xiii) argues that ‘the presumption of a single monolithic racism is being displaced by a mapping of the multifarious historical formulations of racisms’. Thus, traditional forms of racism linked to biological difference have perhaps become out-dated as racism has now attached itself to cultural differences between racial or ethnic groups. Elizabeth Poole (2002) describes how this contemporary manifestation of racism has its roots in Orientalist discourse and constructions of the ‘other’. Following the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, one of the UK’s leading newspapers the Daily Mail published a photo which featured caricatures of bearded Muslim men with exaggerated noses and veiled women crossing ‘Europe’s open borders’, along with scurrying rats. The implication being, they are one and the same. McKernan (2015) notes that the cartoon was widely denounced as racist and the image reminded many observers of Nazi propaganda. Allegretti (2015) explains that despite the plea of the President of the European Commission not to equate terrorists with refugees, the Daily Mail was unrepentant in its equation . Likewise the UK’s most popular tabloid (The Sun) newspaper suggested a fifth of Muslims in Britain had sympathy for ISIS fighters. Despite the methodology of this poll being questioned and the newspapers interpretation of findings by the pollsters themselves (Melley 2015), The Sun was adamant of its claim (BBC Trending 2015). The Newspaper’s former editor even suggesting that ISIS was the beating heart of Islam (Burnett 2015). These finding that assert that the media 326

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overwhelmingly associate Muslims/Islam with negative connotations have been reproduced in research throughout Western media. Karim (2003) notes that negative and distorted images of Islam dominated US media since the Iranian revolution of 1979. Assertions by then US presidential candidate Donald Trump to ban all Muslims following the shootings California followed a well-worn pattern of US–Muslim relations (Jones 2015). According to the US figures since 2012 their have been 1052 mass shootings in the USA (Guardian Team 2018). Insightful research by Clark (2018) notes that out of 207 shootings since 2015, only one was committed by a Muslim. He conceded: the other 206? It’s hard to tell because many suspects have not been identified. But, and here’s the point, they are not identifiably Muslim and Islamic terrorism was not identifiably the motive . . . Beginning with the links provided by Shooting Tracker, my analysis of the media coverage related to each mass shooting revealed a pattern. For every non-Muslim shooting suspect, the media never mentioned their religion. (Clark 2018) Hence the connection is made between Islam and terrorism or Muslims and crime. The subsequent shootings in 2017 in Las Vegas and at the Baptist Church shooting in Texas by White (for want of a better word) non-Muslims have followed the narrative of ‘individual responsibility’ rather than a characteristic of the collective community- namely White Christians. This follows a well-known pattern that for many is exemplified by marking 9/11 as a ‘terrorist’ attack, associated with Islamic extremists, had unfortunate consequences for minority Muslim communities in the West. We see a similar pattern in Europe where, Europol reports, from 2007–2009 Islamic terror constitutes a tiny fraction of the terrorist attacks in European countries. During that period, more then 99 per cent of terrorist attacks in Europe were by non-Muslims (Europol 2007, 2008, 2009). The most recent report notes a decrease in Jihadist/Islamic inspired terrorist attacks from 2015 (Europol 2017). It could be argued that the new ‘floating signifier’ is not ‘colour’ but religion and specifically Islam or Muslims. Although it should be noted that contemporary racisms combine assumptions about religion, class, nation. A UK YouGov poll suggests that sympathy for Syrian refugees in the wake of the attacks in Paris has plummeted. 49 per cent of those surveyed said that the UK should not accept any refugees from Syria, or accept fewer numbers. This is a 22 per cent increase from September 2015 (Dahlgreen 2015). One could suggest that if ‘race’ discourse is upheld in everyday language, the problematic ideology of racial difference will continue to live on. What we must remember is that ‘racial’ differences are social inventions, not natural. As Meer and Nayak (2013, p. 13) eloquently note, ‘race is very much installed in the here and now. It remains ever present in late- modernity and strangely solid in liquid times.’ Thus, despite the ambiguous nature and problematic history of ‘race’ in contemporary modern and global society, essentialised ‘race’ thinking still appeals to significant sections of humanity. This leads to racism. Miles urges us to think of ‘race’ and ‘racism’ not as concepts that are rigid and fixed but rather as ones that constantly change and evolve according to different social, political and historical contexts. Race and racism thus go ‘hand in hand.’ Goldberg (1990, p. xiii) argues that ‘the presumption of a single monolithic racism is being displaced by a mapping of the multifarious historical formulations of racisms’. It is more appropriate, then, to speak of ‘racisms’ – as Miles puts it (1993, p. 26), ‘different modalities of racism within the historical matrix mapped by the evolution of the capitalist mode of production and by the associated rise of the nation state’. Or to use Balibar and Wallerstein words, 327

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racisms are ‘ever active formations’ which materialise in any number of ‘historical trajectories’ (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991, p. 40). This historical trajectory has resulted in the development of anti-Muslim racism commonly associated with the term ‘Islamophobia’.

Islamophobia The word ‘Islamophobia’ has been coined because there is a new reality which needs naming: anti-Muslim prejudice has grown so considerably and so rapidly in recent years that a new item in the vocabulary is needed (Runnymede Trust 1997, p. 4). It could be argued that Islamophobia came about because of a desire, by Western powers, to prolong the ideology of white or Western supremacy. Much literature has debated the term, its definition and the extent of Islamophobia in society in recent years (Allen 2016; Esposito and Kalin 2011; Sayyid and Vakil 2011). For Halliday, the term ‘Islamophobia’ is inaccurate because it is too uniform. Halliday (1999) points out that usage of this term implies that there is only one Islam and that all Muslims are homogeneous. In short, Halliday (1999, p. 898) is proposing that Islamophobia as a term suggests fear of Islam as a religion not fear of the people who follow Islam. However, Halliday does acknowledge that such academic debates might not prove fruitful for victims of such prejudice. Significantly, the Runnymede Trust also appeals to the media to acknowledge their role in the reproduction of Islamophobia. Various authors have noted that often Islam and Muslims are treated homogeneously in Western media and depicted as the opposite of the West (Saeed 2007; Halliday 1999; Poole 2002; Runnymede Trust 1997; Sardar and Davis 2002). The apparent willingness of these Muslim ‘enemies within’ to support terrorism abroad (Saeed 2004) and develop an ideology that appears to challenge ‘Western democracy’ has seen Muslim minority groups placed under greater scrutiny by governments, public bodies and judicial organisations across the West (Abbas 2012). Kundnani (2007) has described the way in which Muslims have been singled out as the culturally distinct minority whose difference is constructed as a threat to national cohesion and security. Indeed much policy research in relation to Muslim communities is focused on the ‘Preventing Violent Extremism’ agenda (Khan 2009). At the same time, evidence from the Home Office and independent research suggests that violence and discrimination towards Muslims, already significant pre 9/11, has indeed evidently increased. The growth of the Far Right across Europe and the return of street violence and racism directed towards Muslims (or even victims perceived to be Muslims (Meleagrou-Hitchens and Brun 2013; Saeed 2011; Kundnani 2007) has seen Muslims across Europe feeling that they are in a midst of a cultural, social and political siege.

Journalistic responses Interview material In summary then post 9/11 has seen a dramatic increase in newspaper coverage about Islam and Muslims. Karim (2003) suggests that Western media homogenises the Muslim population and fails to look at the varying traits/differences of the global Islamic ‘ummah’. This misrepresentation is compounded by the attention focused on Muslim extremists/fundamentalists and therefore, it could be argued that the ‘preferred reading’ of these discourses highlights the ‘otherness’ of Muslims/Islam from mainstream society (Saeed 2007). It was these thoughts that were put to 328

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the participants in this study. The initial question introduced the area and allowed respondents room to clarify positions: Academic evidence suggests a biased negative representation of Islam and Muslim communities in the West. What are your thoughts on this? The AJE member responded: Islam and Muslims are seen as not belonging and for many people Muslims and Islam are concepts that they are unfamiliar with. Unfortunately this also applies to journalists who have little idea about the religion or the communities. Then when they are told to ‘find’ stories they follow the well-worn pattern of problems that minorities do. Usually the reporting on Islam, or when the media calls somebody a Muslim, everything is bracketed in that one word, and they fail to take into account that it encompasses a huge range of people who are politically different, who are geographically different, who belong to different countries, who are ethnically different, racially they are different. (AJE member, interview, 13 February 2017) A SOE interviewee further elaborated this mis-understanding of Islam and Muslims: For me, I think the biggest issue is often a lack of context among the audience in terms of understanding many of the nuances, both in terms of some of the issues around Islam and the Muslim community, different parts of that community, different sects within Islam. . . . And so we’re sometimes not doing anything to improve the audience’s understanding of those issues, and at worst sometimes simplifying to a point where many people in the audience would have a very hard time understanding. (SOE member, interview, 24 April 2017) The participant here suggests that journalists are following established discourses of problematising and misunderstanding minority cultures. Thus they continue to replicate stories that follow the same pattern. They define the situation and determine how it should be debated. Hall et al. (1978, p. 95) says the media constitute a ‘machinery of representation’ determining ‘what and who gets represented and what and who routinely gets left out [and] how things, people, events, relationships get represented . . . the structure of access to the media is systematically skewed towards certain social categories’. They are thus able to ‘command the field’ in all ‘subsequent treatment’ (Miller 1994). It is important to note that media effects are never simple or direct (Hall et al. 1978). Van Dijk (1987, 1993) links the idea of ‘primary definers’ to the notion that media constitute an ‘elite’ in society. While accepting that the media have conflicts with other social actors he argues that in terms of race and ethnicity an ethnic consensus is prevalent. The debate about ‘otherness’ and ‘cultural clash’ has been re-awakened by the focus of media on non-white immigrants in Europe. Saeed argues: Too often, these debates ignore the reality of the existence of marginalised groups and concentrate on the ‘fear of the outsider’ rather than on the contribution immigrants can make. This homogenisation of ‘otherness’ and stereotyping, however, generates fear, contempt and hatred of the groups deemed ‘other’: non-whites, Muslims, asylum seekers, etc. (Saeed 2015a) 329

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One other aspect of this is a lack or diminution of Muslim sources or voices in new stories. The AJE participant also highlighted the sources where journalists went to ‘get’ or comment on events: When something happens it is easier and quicker for journalists to ‘tap’ into existing contacts or people that have been cited before. Hence it becomes difficult to allow other voices to be heard. We also rely on stories elsewhere and just follow their leads due to lack of time. It’s not right but that the nature of the game now. (AJE member, interview, 13 February 2016) This implies a series of pressures that are faced by journalists. These pressures then appear to help ‘frame’ how the story is represented and possibly understood. It is not suggesting that journalists are Islamophobic consciously but that industry constraints and procedures play an important influence in media representations. When the agenda is consistent among media sources (Mills et al. 2011) the media has the power to create associations for people, relating to ‘race’, culture, and religion. For example, when representing Muslims, the ‘diversity of Muslim identities, practices, and forms of belonging are reduced into a few reactionary cultural practices’ (Semati 2010, p. 267). Moreover, some voices in the media are in fact quite closely connected to the authorities stemming from concerns within the intelligence and security industry (Mills et al. 2011). Mills et al. (ibid.) highlight the importance of powerful right-wing think tanks that have successfully managed to influence the mainstream media with a succession of ‘Muslim scare stories’ that suggest Muslims in the UK are attempting to undermine secular democratic institutions ranging from local governments to higher education. Abbas notes: In the current period, there is a degree of Islamophobia found in think-tanks that have an important role in influencing the current Conservative-Liberal coalition in England. The London-based Centre for Social Cohesion, Policy Exchange and the Quilliam Foundation have all determined that Islamism is wide-ranging and that it is the problem of our time. (Abbas 2012, p. 353) The influence of ‘think tanks’ employing PR tactics to embed news stories within media organisations has been much researched and demonstrated (Mills et al. 2011; Miller 1994). Reese found that journalistic ‘objectivity’, often a professional and institutional ‘ideal’ often means that a narrow network of sources are accessed the most frequently, bringing a consensus view from institutional spokespeople, ‘experts’ and other journalists (Reese cited in McQuail 2010, p. 322). Source/media relationships are symbiotic by nature that means that some sources have unequal access because they hold more power, resources, status and are better organised, more authoritative and gain habitual access. Mutual interest between media and sources can result in assimilation of media material and comes into conflict with critical independence and journalistic professional norms (McQuail 2010). Practises of strategic communications, the existence of ‘spin doctors’ and the emergence of two relatively new industries, advertising and public relations all demonstrate how a ‘third force’ of sources are now operating through lobbyists, social organisations, and interest groups (Manheim cited in McQuail 2010, p. 325). The challenge here then seems to be how to get Muslim voices be heard that debate ‘non-Islamist issues.’ In recent years Muslim organisation have attempted to show the diversity of Islam/Muslims and challenge industry representations. Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) is a not-for-profit company that helps to empower and encourage British Muslims within local communities to be more actively 330

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involved in British media and politics. This issue, of challenging power within the media system and the challenges that itself means, was highlighted by the MEND participant: The coverage of Muslims can be limited to looking at Muslims and Islam in general from the lens of like terrorism and extremism so a lot of stories are often about that. There are of course many stories that are out there but they’re not getting as much coverage, maybe they’re not getting as much attention, for example when there has been terror attacks a lot of people have asked me where is the Muslim condemnation a lot, there has been condemnation from basically every single Muslim organisation that I know and its just the we don’t seem to get covered . . . it is interesting for the example the Not in my Name campaign which was a group of young British Muslims who did a video campaign so those kind of things will get attraction but not just press releases from the organisations so that’s where it is quite difficult (MEND member, interview, 18 February 2017) The participant notes the challenges to be heard and get access to the media to counter the mainstream representation. The Not in My Name (see http://isisnotinmyname.com) employed social media and managed to get some access in the mainstream media. The Muslim Association of Britain member also noted the importance of access to media by employing PR campaigns (see www.inspiredbymuhammad.com): you have to be pretty clever in your PR and everyone knows that . . . so that’s why one of the projects I did was a PR campaign and it was called inspired by Mohammed, as well as a journalist I’m also a director of communications for a foundation called exploring Islam foundation and we specialise in PR campaigns and media resources based upon Islam so one of the campaigns we did was back in 2010 and it was all based around the people being inspired to contribute. (Muslim Association of Britain member, interview) Richardson (2006) looked at the sources quoted in newspaper coverage of Islam and Muslims in the British press and found that in a sample of news articles between October 1997 and January 1998, illegitimate (‘terrorist’) organisations were the most frequently quoted Muslim primary source and that ‘Muslim criminals’ were also frequently quoted. Significantly, the study identified that Muslims were only included in news stories that criticised their actions and faith. It could be suggested that negative representations of Muslims/Islam are not indicative of racist/Islamophobic personnel but rather how the media/journalism industries are structured. Van Dijk (2005) classified four issues that stimulate white news production: an over reliance on white elites as sources (see the reliance on powerful lobbying groups), a disregard of ethnic groups and organisations (hence the absence of Muslim voices, media representations that problematise the existence of minority groups and a dismissal of stories about racism/Islamophobia). In relation to this last point consider the defence of current US president Donald Trump’s attacks on Muslims/Islam. Indeed the SoE participant was quick to highlight how the journalism profession has criteria to combat racism and prejudicial reporting: Journalists have to stick by strict legal considerations and their training means that they are or should be aware of stating libelous or prejudicial comments. They receive considerable able training either in their studies or ‘on the job’ to make them conscious of such issues. (SoE member, interview, 3 March 2016) 331

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Journalists in many countries may aspire to certain values, such as objectivity, but their ability or willingness to actually abide by them is determined by the practicalities of their unique socio-political situation. Dolan (2006) equates the journalistic posture of objectivity with a white identity: purporting invisibility and neutrality when reporting events is tantamount to the unmarked yet privileged vantage that whiteness occupies in society. In the UK, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) (now defunct) sets out guidelines for the reporting of ‘race’ in its code of practice. There are three key aspects of this for journalists to have in mind. First, reference to someone’s ‘race’ must only be made if it is deemed ‘genuinely relevant’ to the story. Second, if such reference is made, it must not be ‘prejudicial or pejorative’. Third, the regulation only applies to the reporting of an individual and therefore does not cover, for example, references to groups or nations of people. This third aspect of the guideline is contentious and has provoked criticism of the PCC. As Frost commented: The PCC’s insistence that only discrimination against individuals breaches the code and that complaints about racism affecting groups of people are really a matter of taste and decency, and therefore not something on which it can adjudicate, begins to look perverse at a time when there is considerable public concern about perceived racism in some reporting of asylum seekers, the Iraq war and terrorism. (Frost 2004, p. 114) In 2010, just over 3 per cent of the 7000 plus complaints made to the PCC were on the grounds of discrimination. Yet, despite receiving dozens of such complaints each year, the PCC has never upheld a complaint made about discrimination in terms of ‘race’. Hence it can be assumed that religious or Islamophobic reporting would also be treated in much the same way. It is to early to tell if the newly created IPSO will be exempt from such criticism in the UK. When this was put to the SoE member namely the lack of political will to challenge racism/Islamophobia: We do take racism seriously, we take any prejudice seriously. So much that we have invested in trying to encourage journalism to reflect the multicultural society we live in. (SoE member, interview, 3 March 2016) There is no doubt that the perpetuation of particular stereotypes around ‘race’ and minority groups that can find articulation in the discourses produced by journalism is, in part, enhanced by a relative lack of diversity among the journalism industry. An absence of newsroom diversity has often been cited as a instrumental factor to the marginalisation and misrepresentation of racialised minority groups across the mainstream media (Ainley 1998; Cottle 2000; Kretzschamar 2007; van Dijk 2005). In his international overview of research into media coverage, van Dijk argues that the composition of the journalism profession is a recurring factor in the production of racist discourses: Many forms of ethnic bias . . . are crucially influenced by the fact that in all white-dominated societies, ethnic journalists are discriminated against in hiring, so that most newsrooms are predominantly white. And those (few) minorities being hired will tend to be recruited not only for their outstanding professionalism, but also because their ethnic ideologies (and especially their moderate antiracism) do not clash with those of the editors. (Van Dijk 2005, p. 199) 332

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Figures suggest that journalism is a ‘white’-dominated profession, particularly in the case of print journalism. Taking membership of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) as a barometer, just 2.2 per cent of the NUJ’s members from regional newspapers are black or minority ethnic (BME) journalists. This figure rises slightly to 3.7 per cent in terms of national news- papers. Broadcast journalism presents a slightly different picture, with 13.7 per cent of the NUJ’s membership classed as BME (Farrington et al. 2012). We have invested in and tried to challenge this. In 2005 we set up the Journalism Diversity Fund to support more and train more journalists from minority backgrounds. (SoE member, interview, 3 March 2016) But while there is clearly an issue with the number of BME students pursuing journalism as a potential career, this does not supply a complete explanation of the problem. For example, the Society of Editors’ report does not account for the fact that diversity reduces towards the higher end of the journalism profession. Barriers exist not only in gaining entry to journalism, but also within the profession once entry has been gained. There are two schools of thought in relation to this. First, more BME writers simply equals a much needed diversity in reporting which would help to benefit how minorities are represented. But one could note that due to ‘racisms’, BME writers would become socialised or institutionalised within the existing norms of media production. To use Fanon’s (1996) argument, the adoption of the ‘white mask’ is crucial for non-whites to succeed in white worlds. Hence, BME journalists may not feel comfortable challenging ‘racisms’, especially covert and institutional racism, which is seen to be almost invisible and difficult to prove, when, after all, they are working in a white-dominated space.

British Muslim voices The nine students provide a valuable voice to this debate. As well as giving access to ‘mainstream’ Muslims, the opinion of these ‘apprentice media workers’ about media misrepresentation and how to challenge this can provide an insightful commentary on the issues. The students were interviewed together and on University premises. The students were not surprisingly angry about media representations of Islam and Muslims. This was evident in passionate and at times emotional outbursts that questioned mainstream media and society’s perceptions of Islam/Muslims. Previous research has indicated that Muslims are angry with media representations of Islam. Studies have focused on the reactions of and responses to such news media portrayals by Muslims, have revealed that there is little or no trust in their views of the news media (Awan 2008; Saeed 2004). An associated issue is that the news media representations contribute to the social exclusion of Muslims (Abbas 2012). For the purposes of this essay though their thoughts on what could be done and what Muslims are doing will be developed. When asked specifically what can journalists do to ensure a more accurarate representation of Islam/Muslims, the following extract revealed a number of issues: Female student, 19 (Level 2 BA, The obvious answer is be more fairer . . . and that means broadcast journalism): don’t be racist and allow all Muslims to be heard not just the nutters. Female student, 20 (Level 2 BA, Yes but . . . that’s what sells . . . ‘Muslims are terrorists, journalism): Muslims are backward’ . . . blah blah blah . . . 333

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Male student, 20 (Level 2 BA, If they knew more about Islam and would challenge the journalism): editors but they don’t . . . how do you explain the difference between Hezbollah and ISIS? . . . you need context but . . .  its easier to say all Muslims [group nods in agreement]. Moderator: So do we need more training given to journalists about history etc.? Female student, 19 (BA, media Yes, but how do you explain that? . . . when we do modules and popular culture): little is given about issues, history or society . . . most of it about law and ethics . . . and how to write . . . it seems you have to fill in the context yourself and then write the story . . . too much pressure ! Male student, 22 (BA, I do think if people could learn that Muslims and . . . white sports journalism): people . . . have loads in common that would help . . . it would help people get on . . . maybe journalists need to learn about Islam . . . it would be good if Muslim organisation would open doors . . . the student society here did a series of talks called ‘Know Islam’ . . . maybe that’s what is required. The students above seem to allude to the current debate that appears to be continually developing in Higher education (at least in the UK) on that whether Journalism as a profession should be more practical/vocational based or allow for more reflective/critical training (Keeble and Reeves 2005). Inquiries into journalism have drawn from a wide range of disciplines, predominantly political science, sociology, history, language and cultural studies. The result, according to Zelizer (2009, p. 34), ‘has been a terrain of journalism study at war with itself, with . . . a slew of independent academic efforts taking place in a variety of disciplines without the shared knowledge crucial to academic inquiry’. Research on college-training affirms that incoming reporters lack the aptitude to write with anything other than a ‘“White bias” and “insensitivity to minorities”’ (Dickson 1995, p. 41). The above extract notes the importance of training. Recently a number of studies have emerged that have looked at the relationship between journalism and academia (Richards and Brown 2017). Others have examined the need to develop or modify Journalism practice (Pintak and Franklin 2013; Rupar and Pesic 2012; Allen 2007). Together these resources emphasised the importance of, and need for, better media coverage of the issue along with the necessity for training and resources tailored to the particular cultural context in which the news media and Muslim people interacted in different parts of the world. Ewart et al. (2017), in an innovative piece of research developed training materials directed at contributing to more inclusive media coverage of Islam and Muslims. They concluded: We find that as a result of the training, there are statistically significant shifts in levels of general knowledge of Islam and Muslims as well as knowledge levels in relation to best-practice approaches to reporting stories involving Islam and Muslims . . . The significance of this article is in that it has highlighted that positive change is possible in news media workers’ knowledge of Islam and Muslims and that provides optimism for interventions. (Ewart et al. 2017, p. 532) This study also highlighted the need for such training to have strong historical context in understanding the diverse range of Muslim communities both locally and globally. This was accompanied by the need to develop a practical training approach that addressed the diverse 334

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technological nature of modern journalism that included understanding of the digital and social media world. This latter point about new media was also developed by the British Muslim journalist students: Female student, 21 (Level 3 BA, I agree with the training and all that . . . but we as Muslims public relations): can do things as well. We can challenge the media and racists . . . if we don’t like a story we can do something. It’s easier now . . . we can blog, tweet and even just do emails. In PR we are taught to use websites and stuff. Yes it’s quicker to run online campaigns and get the Male student, 19 (Level 1 BA, journalism):  community and also other people involved . . . think of the all the stuff after the Paris attacks . . . when Muslims were killed as well. Yes you can use that to help but the problem is racist groups Female student, 19 (BA, media and popular culture): also use social media . . . it’s like a double battle . . . old and new media needs to be . . . well challenged. Muslims are identifying new reflexive spaces in various aspects of the public and social sphere (Meer and Modood 2009), for example, the rise of the Muslim ‘blogo-sphere’ and employment of new/social media to challenge anti-Muslim perceptions (Awan 2014; Saeed 2017). At the forefront of this this are what Gary Blunt calls ‘i-Muslims’ – meaning media savvy Muslims. In September 2014 a new Twitter hashtag #MuslimApologies appeared and and quickly gathered pace it was used almost 30,000 times within 48 hours. The hashtag was originally a response to President Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly in which he noted, ‘it is time for the world – especially Muslim communities – to explicitly, forcefully, and consistently reject the ideology of al Qaeda and ISIL’ (Washington Post 2018). Many of the tweets express almost anger and weariness about having to apologise for the actions of extremists who claim to represent Islam. However what was also evident was the employment of humour to tackle this assumption that ordinary Muslims must prove their ‘anti fundamentalist’ credentials. The ‘conversation’ was followed throughout the Muslim minority diaspora. The following give a flavour of the tweets sent (Rahman 2014): Sorry for Algebra, cameras, universities, hospitals, oh and coffee too I’m so sorry for coffee, cheques, parachutes, chemistry, inoculations, soap, shampoo, cameras I’m sorry it was a Muslim woman, Fatima Muhammad Al-Fihri, that established the world’s first university (See https://twitter.com/servusclementis/status/514772214277619712) The employment of social media demonstrates a sense of ownership of Islam, particularly by Islamic youth. This activism is further evident in the Hedbo incident that is alluded to in the previous focus group extract Grimm notes: the campaign of solidarity with the heroized victims on the Charlie Hebdo editorial staff was a tightrope walk for many Muslims, who did not want to identify with the magazine’s contents. The spread of #JeSuisCharlie hashtags on social media confirms this. The 25 countries with the most contributions include only three majority-Muslim countries: 335

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Lebanon, Turkey and Indonesia. A much more prominent hashtag in the Muslim world was #WhoIsMuhammad, which allowed hundreds of thousands to emphasize the peaceful nature of their faith. However, most tweets by European Muslims came under the alternative hashtag #JeSuisAhmed (retweeted over 290,000 times), drawing attention to the French Muslim Ahmed Merabet, one of the two policemen mur dered by the Charlie Hebdo attackers. (Grimm 2015, p. 4) What should also be stressed is that once again the Muslim online presence is again viewed by suspicion. With mainstream authorities worrying that young Muslims will be come radicalised and that the Internet is have for ‘anti-Western sentiment’. Indeed even ‘liberal’ influential organisation such as Pew Research Center, Anti-Defamation League and RAND Europe have all published reports noting the use of the Internet to promote terrorism and extremism in the Muslim communities. It is evident that social media surveillance on online Muslim spheres is apparent (Awan 2014). Despite this young Muslims are continually employing the internet to express the modern and fluid nature of Muslim identity in the world.

Conclusion While the mainstream media suggest that disenfranchised Muslims are inclined to turn to fundamentalist interpretations of Islam, in many respects this has not been the case. Despite the negative connotations attributed to Muslims’ ‘radicalism’, a survey of British Muslims undertaken by the 1990 Trust in 2006 found that while 82 per cent of its respondents thought that Muslims were becoming more radicalised, a majority (65.2%) crucially did not associate radicalism with violence. Instead, radicalism was primarily associated more with activities such as letter writing, demonstrations, becoming involved in organisations or disengaging with mainstream politics. Since 2006 it seems apparent that British Muslims are increasingly turning towards mew media as a mobilisation tool to challenge stereotypical representations. Furthermore the media industries are acknowledge the need to have a broader spectrum of Muslim voices to challenge Orientalist discourse. Interestingly the ‘media students’ now appear to have a more rounded view of the media. The focus groups indicated the ‘values’ in the production process and the nned to challenge them through more directed and clever lobbying. The rise of groups like MEND and MAB seem to suggest a more multi-faceted manner that representations/statements and opinions that are perceived as racist/Islamophobic are being challenged. Identity is a fluid concept that is subject to change dependent upon situation and influence. What this article shows is that my identity has been greatly influenced by external factors and that this has had a major impact on my academic research as well as my personal identity. Identity should be though of as a process; it is a matter of becoming not just being (Hall 1992). In contemporary multicultural societies, academic research should acknowledge this process. In short, identity is an experience that is ongoing and research is required that highlights the importance of this. Fanon (1996, p. 170) once called for passionate research . . . directed by the secret hope of discovering beyond the misery of today, beyond self-contempt, resignation and abjuration, some very beautiful and splendid era whose existence rehabilitates us both in regard to ourselves and in regard to others. (Fanon 1996, p. 170)

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This study shows that it may be the case that journalism education for professionals in the media industry needs to researched and utilised. By influencing the media production process it maybe possible to have more balanced media representations of all minority groups.

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Europol. 2008. EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report (TE-SAT) 2008. Retrieved from www.europol. europa.eu/activities-services/main-reports/eu-terrorism-situation-and-trend-report-te-sat-2008 (accessed 18 April 2018). Europol. 2009. EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report (TE-SAT) 2009. Retrieved from www.europol. europa.eu/activities-services/main-reports/eu-terrorism-situation-and-trend-report-te-sat-2009 (accessed 18 April 2018). Europol 2017. EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report (TE-SAT) 2017. Retrieved from www.europol. europa.eu/activities-services/main-reports/eu-terrorism-situation-and-trend-report-te-sat-2017 (accessed 18 April 2018). Ewart, J., O’Donnell, K. and Chrzanowski, A. 2017. What a difference training can make: Impacts of targeted training on journalists, journalism educators and journalism students’ knowledge of Islam and Muslims. Journalism, 19(6). Fanon, F. 1996. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove. Farrington, N., Kilvington, D., Saeed, A. and Price, J. 2012. Race, Racism and Sports Journalism. Abingdon: Routledge. Frost, C. 2004. The press complaints commission: A study of ten years of adjudications on press complaints. Journalism Studies, 5(1), 101–114. Gilroy, P. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Goldberg, D. T. 1990. Anatomy of Racism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Grimm, J. 2015. #We Are Not Charlie. SW Comments, 12 (February). Guardian Team. 2018. 1,000 mass shootings in 1,260 days: this is what America’s gun crisis looks like. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/oct/02/mass-shootingsamerica-gun-violence (accessed 18 April 2018). Hall, S. 1996. Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, pp. 441–449. Abingdon: Routledge. Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. N. and Roberts, B. 1978. Policing the Crises. London: Constable. Halliday, F. 1999. Islamophobia reconsidered. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22(5). Jones, O. 2015. Donald Trump’s real threat is making extreme bigots seem moderate. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/08/donald-trump-bans-muslimsus-comment-bigotry-racism-isis (accessed 18 April 2018] Karim, K. H. 2003. Islamic Peril: Media and Global Violence. Montreal: Black Rose Books. Keeble, R. and Reeves, I. 2005. The Newspapers Handbook. Abingdon: Routledge. Kretzschmar, S. 2007. Diverse journalists in a diverse Europe? Impulses for a discussion on media and integration. European Studies: A Journal of European Culture, History and Politics, 24(1), 203–226. Kundnani, A. 2007. Integrationism: The politics of anti-Muslim racism. Race & Class, 48(4), 24–44. Law, I. 2015. After Paris, Europe must lead the fight against Islamophobia. Available at https://the conversation.com/after-paris-europe-must-lead-the-fight-against-islamophobia-50808 (Accessed 17 April 2018). Mason, D. 2000. Race and Ethnicity in Modern Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McKernan, B. 2015. The Daily Mail published a cartoon that depicts refugees as rats. Retrieved from http:// i100.independent.co.uk/article/the-daily-mail-has-been-accused-of-xenophobia-after-publishing-acartoon-that-depicts-refugees-as-rats--bkJRYorPYe (accessed 18 April 2018). McQuail, D. 2010. McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory. Oxford: Sage Publications. Meer, N. and Modood, T. 2009. Refutations of racism in the ‘Muslim question’. Patterns of prejudice, 43(3–4), 335–354. Meer, N. and Nayak, A. 2013. Race ends where? Race, racism and contemporary sociology. Sociology, 49(6), NP3–NP20. Meleagrou-Hitchens, A. and Brun, H. 2013. A Neo-nationalist Network: The English Defence League and Europe’s Counter-Jihad Movement. London: International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence. Melley, J. 2015. Do 20% of British Muslims really sympathise with jihadists? BBC Magazine. Retrieved from www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34967994 Miles, R. 1993. Racism after ‘Race Relations’. Brighton: Psychology Press. Miller, D. 1994. Don’t Mention the War: Northern Ireland, Propaganda and the Media. London: Pluto Press. Mills, T., Griffin, T. and Miller, D. 2011. The Cold War on British Muslims: An Examination of Policy Exchange and the Centre for Social Cohesion. Glasgow: Spinwatch. 338

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Moore, K., Mason, P. and Lewis, J. M. W. 2008. Images of Islam in the UK: the representation of British Muslims in the national print news media 2000–2008. Working paper, Cardiff University, Cardiff, 7 July. Retrieved from http://orca.cf.ac.uk/53005/1/08channel4-dispatches.pdf (accessed 24 February 2017). O’Neill, D. and Savigny, H. 2014. Female politicians in the British press: the exception to the ‘masculine’norm? Journalism Education, 3(1), 6–27. Pintak, L and Franklin, S. 2013. Islam for Journalists: A Primer on covering Muslim Communities in the America. Pullman, WA: US Social Science Research Council; Edward R Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University. Poole, E. 2002. Reporting Islam: Media Representations and British Muslims. London: I. B. Tauris. Poole, E. and Richardson, J. E. (eds). 2010. Muslims and the News Media. London: I. B. Tauris. Poorebrahim, F. and Reza Zarei, G. 2013. How is Islam portrayed in western media? A critical discourse analysis perspective. International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 1(2), 45–62. Rahman, A. 2014. I’m sorry that #NotInMyName exists. #MuslimApologies No, really. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/servusclementis/status/514772214277619712 (accessed 24 April 2018). Rane, H., Ewart, J. and Martinkus, J. 2014. Media Framing of the Muslim World: Conflicts, Crises and Contexts. Berlin: Springer. Richards, B. and Brown, L. 2017. Evidence and ideology: moderating the critique of media Islamophobia. Journalism Education, 6(1), 12–22. Richardson, J. E. 2001. British Muslims in the broadsheet press: a challenge to cultural hegemony?. Journalism Studies, 2(2), 221–242. Richardson, J. E. 2006. Who gets to speak? A study of sources in the broadsheet press. In E. Poole and J. E. Richardson, (eds), Muslims in the News Media. London: I. B. Tauris. Runnymede Trust. 1997. Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All. London: Runnymede Trust. Rupar, V. and Pesic, M. 2012. Rebuilding Egyptian Media for Democratic Future. Cairo, Egypt: Alam El. Saeed, A. 2004 9/11 and the consequences for British-Muslims. In Anti-Capitalist Britain, pp. 70–81. New Clarion Press. Saeed, A. 2007. Media, racism and Islamophobia: the representation of Islam and Muslims in the media. Sociology Compass, 1(2), 443–462. Saeed, A. 2011. 9/11 and the increase in racism and Islamophobia: a personal reflection. Radical History Review, 111, 210–215. Saeed, A. 2015a. Understanding Islamophobia: Muslims in popular media. Media Education Journal, 58, 16–23. Saeed, A. 2015b. Racism and Islamophobia: a personal perspective. Identity Papers: A Journal of British and Irish Studies, 1(1), 15–31. Saeed, A. 2017. Digital orientalism: Muslim youth, Islamophobia and online racism. In S. Hamid (ed.), Young British Muslims: Between Rhetoric and Realities. London: Taylor & Francis. Sardar, Z. and Davies, M. W. 2003. Why Do People Hate America? Newburyport, MA: Red Wheel Weiser. Sayyid, S. and Vakil, A. 2011. Thinking through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives. London: Hurst. Semati, M. 2010. Islamophobia, culture and race in the age of empire. Cultural Studies, 24(2), 256–275. Van Dijk, T. A. 1987. Communicating Racism: Ethnic Prejudice in Thought and Talk. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Van Dijk, T. A. 1993. Elite Discourse and Racism (vol. 6). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Van Dijk, T. A. 2005. Contextual knowledge management in discourse production. In R. Wodak and P. Chilton (eds), A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 71–100. Washington Post. 2018. Full text of President Obama’s 2014 address to the United Nations General Assembly. Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com/politics/full-text-of-president-obamas-2014-address-tothe-united-nations-general-assembly/2014/09/24/88889e46-43f4-11e4-b437-1a7368204804_story. html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.846652dd9cdd (accessed 24 April 2018). Zelizer, B. 2009. The Changing Faces of Journalism: Tabloidization, Technology and Truthiness. Abingdon: Routledge.

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27 Flying while Muslim Should we be concerned about Islamophobia at the airport? Leda Blackwood

Introduction Oh no, we’re in trouble TSA always wanna burst my bubble Always get a random check when I rock the stubble Swet Shop Boys, T5 The expression ‘flying while Muslim’ is now widely used to capture a set of intimidating and humiliating experiences Muslims report having, when travelling in non-Muslim countries (Blackwood, Hopkins and Reicher 2015). Increasingly, airport authorities (as well as airlines) are being challenged to account for these experiences, and to address discriminatory policies and practices that may contribute (Khaleeli 2016). Yet, some scholars have questioned whether there really is a problem; even if Muslims experience disproportionately more stops, is it discrimination if people are just doing their job (e.g. Greer 2010)? Others accept that there is discrimination but question both the feasibility and the desirability of doing anything about it; surely the hurt feelings of a few is an acceptable price to pay for the security of the many (e.g. Higgins, Gabbidon and Jordan 2008; Ravich 2010)? In this chapter I draw on research conducted with British Muslims and airport authorities, as well as wider reportage of Muslim experiences, to examine what is wrong with these arguments and why we should indeed be concerned about Islamophobia at the airport (Blackwood 2015; Blackwood, Hopkins and Reicher 2012, 2013a, 2013b, 2015; Mohammad 2016). This argument is developed in three sections. In the first section, I summarise the findings from research conducted with Scottish Muslims on their encounters with airport authorities and briefly discuss why people’s experiences of injustice and identity misrecognition in the airport are psychologically painful and consequential for their perceptions of themselves and their social relations. In the second, I examine how organisational context and practices of surveillance in airports may warrant Muslims’ claims that, despite authorities’ claims to the contrary, there is indeed discriminatory treatment. Finally, I consider why we should be concerned and highlight some of the implications of Muslims’ experiences for their (dis)engagement as citizens and more specifically in relation to authorities. 340

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Scottish Muslims’ encounters in airports Between 2009 and 2012, I along with my colleagues, Nick Hopkins and Stephen Reicher, conducted research with Scottish Muslims in which we asked about day-to-day experiences with Scottish authorities (see Blackwood, Hopkins and Reicher 2013a for a fuller description of the research). We heard a wide range of stories about people’s encounters; many were positive and indeed, we discerned some pride in police-Muslim relations in Scotland, which many compared favourably to England (see also Bonino 2015). What stood out, however, was a widely shared and universally negative experience of airports. In brief, our research identified a ‘Muslim Airport Story’ involving anxiety in the anticipation of travel and when approaching security; hypervigilance associated with believing that all eyes are on you because you are Muslim; humiliation when pulled aside in front of other passengers; and powerlessness in a context where because one may be judged as ‘other’ and dangerous, it is unsafe to ask questions or complain (Blackwood, Hopkins and Reicher 2012, 2013a, 2013b, 2015). There were a number of features of the ‘Muslim Airport Story’ that we believed warranted focussing our analysis on this site. First, this story was widely shared among our interviewees and united older community members (including those who were in some instances working with authorities) with those more typically subject to scrutiny (e.g. young males: Gray and Manning 2014). Second, whereas our interviewees were often uncertain about how to attribute negative treatment in other contexts, all were certain that the basis for their treatment in airports was that they were Muslim. Thus, there was a collective consciousness about discrimination based on Muslim identity that was linked explicitly to airports. Third, and central to this Chapter, these experiences were seen as undermining trust and confidence in authorities and as compromising relations with the wider British community. A strong body of evidence supports concerns about negative interactions with authorities contributing to the erosion of British Muslims’ trust and confidence in authorities (e.g. Alam and Husband 2013; Awan 2012; Choudhury and Fenwick 2011; Kundnani 2009; Spalek and Weeks 2016; Tyler and Wakslak 2004). Much of the social psychological research in this area is informed by Tyler and Lind’s (1992) relational model of procedural justice (e.g. Bradford, Jackson and Stanko 2009; Jackson and Sunshine 2006). According to this model, confidence in, and cooperation with the police and wider societal authorities, is shaped by people’s beliefs about whether authorities exercise their power in accordance with four principles – neutrality (treatment is fair and unbiased); voice (views are invited and listened to); dignity and respect (rights are recognised); and motives (genuine and trustworthy). What is central to these dynamics, and what links people’s experiences with authorities to their relations with the wider community, is group-based identity. Specifically, when people share a common group identity (e.g. British identity) they expect fair and just treatment (Tyler and Lind 1992). The corollary to this is that the violation of this expectation by representatives of that group (e.g. societal authorities), amounts to being told that one is not actually regarded as a bone fide group member (Sunshine and Tyler 2003). Research conducted with Muslim communities in Australia, Canada, and the UK supports these processes and their effects. Specifically, Zine (2002) found that US border security practices of fingerprinting and photographing Muslims born outside Canada, were experienced as challenging people’s previously taken for granted ‘Canadianness’. By contrast, Madon, Murphy and Cherney (2016) found that policing that was explicitly based on procedural justice principles strengthened Australian Muslims’ sense of connection to mainstream Australian society. Finally, in our research with Scottish Muslims, many of our interviewees understood their treatment in terms of a violation of their right to be regarded as equals and treated with dignity 341

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and respect; and spoke of this experience in terms of a denial of their Britishness (Blackwood, Hopkins and Reicher 2013a). An important insight from literature on the experience of having one’s identities denied or misrecognised is that these experiences matter not just for what they communicate about how one is seen, but for what this in turn means for how one can act (Honneth 2008; Neville, Viard and Turner 2015). For instance, if a person sees themselves as British, liberal and lawabiding, but there are circumstances where those around them do not, then acting on the basis of these self-definitions may be less than straightforward. This was most poignantly illustrated by a Muslim man who, in explaining that he would not feel safe to intervene in a crisis at the airport, lamented: ‘it’s not a nice way to be, I want to do good in this world and when there are certain places that you’re restricted from doing that, it’s not comfortable’ (Blackwood, Hopkins and Reicher 2015). Thus, the denial of one’s valued identities impacts on one’s agency – on the ability to act in ways of one’s choosing. As is implicit in the above quote, the issue of identity denial and misrecognition is not simply about how one was viewed by authorities. What also mattered was that in the context of wider representations of Muslims as potential terrorists, being publicly positioned as suspect was experienced as inviting others to be complicit in viewing one as alien and suspect (Blackwood, Hopkins and Reicher 2013a). Wider research on police-community encounters also speaks to these concerns. For instance, in FitzGerald’s (1999; see also Miller, Bland and Quinton 2001) research with young people in London, a particular source of grievance was the humiliation of being stopped by police outside work, outside the Mosque, and more generally in public spaces. Importantly, the experience of public humiliation is not just about ‘hurt feelings’; it is consequential for public support. Thus, in our interviews, being publicly positioned as ‘other’ created a sense of isolation and of being cut-off from the potential support of fellow citizens, including from fellow Muslims (Blackwood, Hopkins and Reicher 2012; Neuhauser 2011; Ginges and Atran 2008). Finally, finding that those who are proud of their British identity may be particularly affected (or affected in particular ways) is consistent with research concerning the experience of identity denial conducted with a number of ethnic and religious minorities including Asian, African, and Cuban Americans (Barlow, Taylor and Lambert 2000; Cheryan and Monin 2005; Meer, Martineau and Thompson 2012). It also tallies with findings at a Midwestern airport (Sindhav, Holland, Rodie, Adidam and Pol 2006) and at Ben Gurion International Airport outside Tel Aviv (Hasisi, Margalioth and Orgad 2012; Hasisi and Weisburd 2011). The latter research was conducted at the post-security check point at Ben Gurion and is particularly instructive. IsraeliArab passengers were found to view security procedures as less legitimate than Israeli-Jewish passengers; and this difference was fully accounted for by specific practices that targeted Arabs. That is to say, Israeli-Arab passengers felt that they were treated less equally and this perception appears to have been warranted with close to half of Israeli-Arab passengers having their suitcase opened for ‘additional’ security checks compared with less than ten percent of Israeli-Jews. The authors concluded that it was not the case that the perception of discrimination was easily triggered; it depended on security checks that were of a clearly discriminatory nature.

Is there really a problem in airports? Since publishing the above research, concerns about Muslim treatment both in airports and by airlines have not abated. Indeed, if anything, they have become more prominent in social media and in the mainstream press. The hashtag #flyingwhilemuslim is perhaps the clearest manifestation of heightened recognition of a shared story; moreover, it provides a platform for sharing 342

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experiences and mobilising consciousness and dissent (van Stekelenburg and Klandermans 2017). Stories that have received especially wide attention are ones where people have been removed from planes for such seemingly innocuous reasons as speaking or texting in Arabic, using the word ‘inshallah’, reading a book about Syria, and even grappling with maths equations (Khaleeli 2016; Mohammad 2016; Revesz 2016). In January 2017, the US President signed an executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries (Diamond 2017). What ensued was chaos as thousands of travellers were stranded in airports, unable to board planes for the US or turned back at points of entry (Einashe 2017). While some in the US and elsewhere expressed outrage at what they saw as the discriminatory singling out of Muslims; others defended the measure on the grounds that the ban did not target Muslims (merely the countries from which terrorists hail), and that tightening control over one’s borders is a reasonable response to the terrorism threat (Linderman 2017). For many Muslims in the UK, both the experiences and the justifications were familiar but now writ large and seen as further deepening the climate of suspicion and hostility affecting their travel (Ross and Sherwood 2017). Reflecting the above debate, one of the principal complaints expressed by British Muslims about airports relates to the experience of multiple stops. People’s experiences of these stops are attributed to a bias that conflates Islamic beliefs with support for terrorism (Blackwood, Hopkins and Reicher 2013a); and are seen as evidence for profiling on the basis of ethnicity and religion. In personal communications with senior police and airport officials in the UK, the response to these complaints has always been the same. First, UK airport officials do not profile on the basis of religion or ethnicity but are ‘intelligence-led’. Second, to the extent that Muslims experience disproportionate stops, this can be explained in terms of legitimate profiling criteria such as travelling to a listed destination. In order to understand these conflicting perspectives, we need to consider both the legislative and organisational context of airports, as well as the day-to-day practices entailed in the surveillance of this space. Below I draw on research conducted in 2013 with senior and front-line personnel from each of the agencies at a mid-sized British airport (police and intelligence officers, border force, security, and airline agency staff). The purpose of the research was to gain insight into how airport personnel themselves made sense of the kinds of negative interactions Muslims described having in the airports; and to identify aspects of the airport context that may contribute to Muslims’ negative experiences and construals (Blackwood 2015).

The legislative and institutional context of surveillance in the UK The Terrorism Act 2000 and the Equality Act 2010 are two pieces of legislation that are particularly important to the policing of UK Airports. Under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 examining officers1 are authorised to stop any person at a UK port in order to ascertain whether they are involved in terrorism. Examining officers may question the persons stopped, inspect their documents, search them or their vehicle, and detain them for up to six hours. The Equality Act 2010 makes it unlawful for any officer to discriminate against, harass or victimise on the grounds of a protected characteristic (including ethnicity and religion). UK Government figures show there has been a decline in stops and searches under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act from 85,000 a year in 2009/10 to 18,103 in the year ending March 2017. In these most recent figures, non-White persons constitute 68% of those stopped (Home Office 2017b; Revesz 2016). The UK’s previous Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, David Anderson QC, has credited the decline in Schedule 7 stops, in part, to clearer guidance in the Code of Practice for Examining officers on matters that have been a source of grievance (Home Office 2015). 343

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For instance, the Code of Practice now clearly stipulates that: Using background and religion (alone or in combination) as a criteria for stopping people is not acceptable; people who are stopped must be treated with respect and courtesy; care must be taken to minimise embarrassment and discomfort; and where possible people should be assisted with their onward journey. As outlined in the first part of this Chapter, these changes are consistent with procedural justice principles (Tyler and Lind 1992) and signal a positive political and legislative response to Muslim concerns. There are, however, a number of problems with taking such statistics and arguments at face value. Most importantly, not all stops are Schedule 7 stops. While only designated ‘examining officers’ are authorised to conduct Schedule 7 stops, other authorities may conduct screening interviews to determine whether someone should be referred to an examining officer. Where someone is not referred, there is no requirement to record the interview. Thus, we cannot expect to gain a complete and accurate picture of how much scrutiny Muslims are actually given. There are, however, aspects of the organisational context within which scrutiny in airports occurs, and some common practices, which may shed light on why Muslims continue to experience airports as hostile environments. Below I present two contributing factors drawn from my airport research (see Kirschenbaum et al. 2012 for a more detailed analysis of why airport practice may deviate from rules and procedures).

Surveillance saturation Airports are spaces saturated with surveillance. Unlike many other environments, there are multiple authorities and therefore multiple opportunities for people to be scrutinised and stopped (Kirshenbaum et al. 2012). To take the example of the airport in which I conducted my research, points at which departing passengers could encounter authorities included: (a) check-in where airline agents routinely question passengers about the contents of their baggage; (b) the ‘kiss-and-fly’ point where passengers could be challenged about oversized bags; (c) passport control where documentation is scrutinised; (d) airport security entailing the removal of clothes and random searches; (e) a special branch desk placed in the security hall; and (f) the boarding gate and on-board the aircraft where aircrew members can have passengers removed. On arrival, passengers run the gauntlet of (g) presenters in the Immigration hall; (h) an immigration check point where passengers may be directed to a holding room; (i) the holding room itself and rooms for strip search; (j) another special branch desk positioned behind the immigration check; (k) the baggage hall in which customs officers patrol with dogs; and (l) the customs declaration point. In addition, all areas of the airport were fitted with CCTV and patrolled by police and other dedicated security officers, including Behaviour Detection Officers (BDOs). Moreover, frontline airport police have a role in responding to other authorities as well as the travelling public; and in encouraging other airport authorities, businesses and passengers to observe and report ‘suspicious’ behaviour. When asked what airport businesses would be instructed to look out for, one officer explained: ‘any kind of activity that seems out of the normal and they’re down there every day so they know what’s normal and what isn’t’. Thus, there are a range of potential actors involved in ‘sounding the alarm’ and the criterion for doing so is ambiguous and subjective. The implications of this are clear in media stories which cite passengers feeling ‘uneasy’ or ‘uncomfortable’ as reasons for Muslims being prevented from boarding or being removed from aircraft (Khaleeli 2016; Mohammad 2016; Revesz 2016). Taken together, the above suggests that Muslim concerns about constant surveillance in the airport and the potential for authorities to act not just on their own prejudices, but on 344

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the prejudices of others, are well founded. There is also evidence for the actions of authorities contributing to others’ prejudices through inviting and validating suspicions based on people’s ‘intuitions’ (see also Choudhury and Fenwick 2011; Kundnani 2009). This is despite a legal duty under Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 to: (a) eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation; (b) advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not; and (c) foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not. Some front-line airport staff expressed a keen awareness and discomfort about public prejudice directed at Muslims; for instance, one police officer expressed frustrations about non-Muslim passengers’ displays of hostility towards Muslim passengers following the terrorist attack at Glasgow airport. But it was not evident whether and how staff would (or could) act to protect Muslim passengers from hostility and advance the positive goals of equal opportunity and good relations (Blackwood 2015).

Reliance on ‘behaviour detection’ One of the grounds on which someone can be stopped and searched under Schedule 7, is ‘observation of an individual’s behaviour’ (Home Office 2015). In the US and in the UK, airports have relied on the deployment of specialist, Behaviour Detection Officers (BDOs) whose job is to unobtrusively observe passengers and detect behavioural signs of mal-intent. Although official information on the UK scheme is difficult to access, it was mentioned frequently in my research as playing a vital role in detecting people who are acting suspiciously. It has also been mentioned favourably by David Anderson QC as contributing to a reduced reliance on ‘intuitive stops’ (Anderson 2015). There is more information about the US scheme (SPOT: Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques) on which the UK scheme is based; perhaps because this has been the subject of controversy (Blandón-Gitlin, Fenn, Masip and Yoo 2014; Halsey 2014; Meyer 2010; Weinberger 2010). In the US, there have been complaints from within the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) that the program has ‘become a magnet for racial profiling’ (Schmidt and Lichtblau 2012). There have also been a number of reviews including by the US Government Accountability Office (2011, 2013) which have called into question the science claims on which behaviour detection schemes are based and the potential for these schemes to facilitate bias and violate privacy. In essence, the concern is that even if one is able to detect ‘unusual’ behaviour, determining motive or intent (for instance, whether someone is anxious about a family reunion or planning a terrorist attack) is more difficult and subject to bias. Regardless of whether or not we should have confidence in BDOs to accurately identify those requiring additional attention, my research suggested that how BDOs’ decision-making is understood by other staff may be consequential for their own practices (Blackwood 2015). When asked about what BDOs were looking for, there was the suggestion that the BDOs would be relying on ‘intuition’ or what is referred to as ‘thick professionalism’ (Gundhus 2013). The following extract was in response to probing one police officer on this question: I’m not entirely sure exactly what it is they’re looking for. Some of them are just your usual sort of criminal radar, you know? That guy’s acting shifty, he’s not looking at me, every time I look at him he’s looking away’, you know, that kind of thing. On the surface some reliance on the observation of whether someone looks ‘shifty’ might appear to be unexceptional; after all, why should it lead to greater targeting of Muslims? On deeper inspection, it becomes questionable once we consider both the potential biases of those doing the looking, and the effects that believing yourself or your group to be the target of 345

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surveillance has on how people behave. Reports on anti-Muslim sentiment and hate crimes (particularly in the aftermath of terrorist incidents: Home Office 2017a, 2017b; National Police Chief’s Council 2017; Zempi and Awan 2016) coupled with research on the treatment of Muslims as a ‘suspect community’ (e.g. Pantazis and Pemberton 2009, 2011) warrant concern about community-wide and more specific police bias directed towards Muslims. Moreover, research on the psychological and physiological effects of frequent exposure to the kinds of micro-aggressions that Muslims face in their day-to-day lives (Smith, Allen and Danley 2007), and more specifically, research on behavioural responses (Mythen, Walklate, and Khan 2009), alerts us to the potential for Muslims to be acting in what might be considered ‘shifty’ ways. For instance, take this young man in our research who commented: I will change the way I look at people. I will try and avoid eye contact with staff at the airport, at the duty free department and things like that. The way I walk, how I carry my bag. What I carry with me. This account of avoiding eye contact and not wearing markers of Muslim identity was mentioned frequently in our research. We also find frequent reference to this in media accounts of people’s experiences. As the lyrics that opened this paper attest, for young Muslim men, the notion that one will ‘always get a random check when I rock the stubble’ is a recognisable experience. In a similar vein, Mythen, Walklate and Khan (2009, p. 749) describe Muslim men’s ‘performances of safety’ such as ‘reducing the use of Urdu’ and keeping an ‘acceptable European regulation length beard’; and Hickman, Thomas, Nickels and Silvestri (2012) showed that both Irish and Muslim responses to counter-terrorism measures included self-silencing and avoidance of public spaces. Thus, what is striking is that not only are practices of behavioural observation questionable in terms of bias; but they may be leading to changes in behaviour that render them even less reliable (Ergün, Açıkel and Turhan 2017).2

Should we be concerned about Islamophobia at the airport? Establishing the precise degree to which Muslims experience discrimination in UK airports may be difficult. There can be little doubt, however, that ‘flying’ is a more fraught undertaking for British Muslims than it is for non-Muslims. In this section I want to return to the question of how Muslims are affected by their airport experiences. But here I want to focus on just some of the changes in behaviours that may signal a withdrawal from social participation and engagement. Deciding to travel less frequently was one consequence that some Muslims in our research commented on with a degree of regret. For instance, one of our interviewees had always wanted to go to Disneyland but didn’t want the ‘hassle’ associated with US airports (Blackwood, Hopkins and Reicher 2015). In light of the Trump ‘travel ban’ the Muslim Council of Britain (Einashe 2017) has suggested that many more British Muslims will be deterred from traveling to the US; both from fear and also as a political response to their ‘othering’. Writing in The New York Times, Ismail Einashe (2017) recounts the concerns of an elementary school teacher in London, Ms Abokor, who says ‘I don’t want to risk being turned away or having a hard time getting in a place that does not want my people, then you don’t deserve my tourist money.’ In some respects this might seem a trivial consequence. Yet, it reflects a sense in which some Muslims’ ability to live the full and active lives of a ‘global’ citizen are constrained; and also signals a change in social relations where some citizens find themselves in conflict with those authorities they hold responsible. 346

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A second feature of people’s accounts is the effects on relations with airport authorities specifically. At the beginning of the chapter I discussed the consequences of perceiving authorities’ actions to be unfair and illegitimate for trust and confidence. Here I want to focus on the implications for subsequent interactions with authorities. These may be hard to gauge and we would expect people’s behavioural responses to vary; for instance, some of our interviewees cited a loss of confidence and trust in airport authorities as a reason for passive non-compliance while for others it was seen as warranting active defiance (Blackwood, Hopkins and Reicher 2015). Moreover, this sometimes varied depending on the contingencies within a particular context. Thus, we found that even the most proudly ‘British’ and ‘respectable’ Muslims (including those working with counter-terrorism police) described circumstances in the airport where they considered withholding information about themselves or others from the authorities, and sometimes even lying, to be both legitimate and necessary. Indeed failure to cooperate with airport authorities was sometimes represented as a moral duty and entirely compatible with British identity and commitment. When presenting such examples to frontline airport staff, one response was to question the character, the maturity, and the commitment to the national interest of those who complain or fail to cooperate (Blackwood 2015). Indeed, in a focus group with airport personnel, it was explained that any sign of non-cooperation or of questioning or challenging authorities, would be seen as a sign of having something to hide and, moreover, as warranting additional scrutiny. What this may fail to recognise is Muslims themselves share the wider community’s fears regarding terrorism and are often willing to accept inconvenient and personally intrusive measures to guarantee national security (Davis and Silver 2004). Hence, where those measures are perceived to be unfair or ineffective, Muslims may in turn question airport authorities’ own characters, their competence, and their commitment to the national interest. This is particularly well illustrated by a young man who had spent time in the British Forces, believed in the importance of discipline, hierarchy and authority, and was critical of fellow Muslims who he saw as unwilling to accept the sacrifices entailed in stringent national security measures. But these qualities made him even more critical of those authorities he judged as acting illegitimately and abusing their power. Commenting on an experience involving his grandmother at border control his disdain was plain: I was like there’s no need for that, the only reason you’re saying that is to make yourself feel important and then we have to start begging you. But in my head, that made him less important. Moreover, he draws our attention to the often subtle processes involved in the loss of trust and respect. Below he articulates a shift in his relationship with authorities to one that is marked by inauthenticity: I don’t sort of listen to Authority figures now because I respect them. That sort of disappeared and it’s just I think I respect you out of sort of like a formality, like I have to respect you. So I have to listen to what you say, but it doesn’t mean I respect you on the inside. This description of a disjuncture between public expression of respect for authorities and private disdain speaks powerfully to the hidden nature of processes of disengagement and alienation. In recent years, research on the consequences of power asymmetries for how interactions between majority and minority members are both experienced and construed has produced some ‘uncomfortable’ findings (Dixon, Durrheim and Tredoux 2005; Dixon et al. 2010). As the above discussion can attest, interactions viewed by authorities as legitimate and unproblematic can be viewed very differently by those on whose trust and cooperation they depend. 347

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Conclusion While it might be tempting to assert, based on legislation and codes of practice, that discrimination in the airport does not exist, there are strong grounds for Muslims’ claims about biased and humiliating treatment in airports. Moreover, there are grounds for arguing that these experiences are eroding trust and confidence in airport and wider authorities. Of concern, recent research suggests that once people lose confidence that they are respected by authorities and included in society, the restoration of trust may be difficult. In part, this is because of the asymmetrical effects of negative and positive experiences. For instance, Skogan’s (2012) research on public confidence in police found that the impact of negative experiences on perceptions of performance and legitimacy were four to fourteen times greater than the impact of positive experiences. Moreover, among socially marginalised groups there is evidence that the adoption of procedural justice measures in policing have no effect and sometimes may even create backlash effects (Cherney and Murphy 2011; Huo and Tyler 2001). There are a number of potential explanations for this. One is that where people belong to a group that is stigmatised or targeted, prior negative experiences can colour how they interpret future experiences (including positive ones: Lloyd and Foster 2009). In addition, where there is a history of conflict and mistrust it can be difficult to create the conditions where the interaction is seen as between two co-citizens rather than between groups (Giles, Choi and Dixon 2010). From the perspective of airport authorities, national security concerns may trump concerns about Muslims’ confidence in their relations with airport authorities (Lum et al. 2013). However, research shows that withholding information and cooperation from authorities is more likely in contexts where wider community members feel alienated and less able to act (Callaway and Harrelson-Stephens 2006). There can be no doubt that addressing Muslims’ negative experiences in airports is difficult in a wider context in which Muslims have been positioned as dangerous ‘other’. There are, however, both immediate and long-term dangers to security and society if we do not try.

Notes 1 The term ‘examining officer’ has the same meaning as in paragraph 1 of Schedule 7 i.e. a constable; or an immigration officer or customs officer designated for the purpose of Schedule 7 by the Secretary of State (and, in the case of a customs officer, the Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs), such officer having been accredited as having successfully completed training in the use of the Schedule 7 powers.The code only applies to police officers and designated immigration or customs officers when they are exercising their functions as examining officers under the Act and not in any other circumstances, for example where they may be questioning a person under the Immigration Act 1971 or the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979. 2 To underscore the argument that bias not only exists but that it might in fact be making us less safe, Jeffrey Goldberg, an Israeli-American journalist, has engaged in various ‘dubious’ behaviours (e.g. ripping up counterfeit boarding passes) in US airports without arousing suspicion. He has also passed US airport check-points while carrying a range of ‘suspicious’ paraphernalia including Al Qaeda T-shirts, Islamic Jihadi flags, and Hezbollah videotapes, all without being prevented from flying (Goldberg 2008; Kleinder 2010). Goldberg’s conclusion: ‘Airport security in America is a sham – “security theatre” designed to make travellers feel better and catch stupid terrorists.’

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28 Far-right Islamophobia From ideology to ‘mainstreamed’ hate crimes Matthew Feldman and Paul Stocker

Introduction The far right’s attempts to promote anti-Muslim hatred in the UK have not been successful on its own. Instead, it has corresponded with a normalisation of anti-Muslim bigotry in more mainstream circles. While the organised far right in Britain is, electorally at least, at its lowest ebb since perhaps the 1980s, cognate ideas appear to have become more acceptable within British political culture and society, particularly over the question of Islam. In showing this, the present chapter first reflects upon the far right’s articulations of Islam, demonstrating that it has become part of wider political discourse. It will then turn to the question of Islamophobic hate crime – the manifestation of anti-Muslim ideas translated into attacks against individuals. While not necessarily drawing a causal link between the growing ‘acceptability’ of Islamophobia and hate crimes, it does seek to place the ideas which motivate attacks on Muslims and indeed other ethnic and social minorities into a broader context. As the chapter will conclude, it is impossible to remove the reality of hate crime, which is overwhelmingly targeted towards ethnic minorities, from the political and social climate in which it exists. Tackling the surge in hate crime – which spiked 18% in 2015, 19% in 2016, and fully 29% in 2017 (Home Office 2017) – requires positive action in order to prevent its further rise.

Far-right Islamophobia and its mainstreaming Anti-Muslim prejudice has been subject to a number of different definitions, and this article does not seek to contribute to the debate over what and what does not constitute Islamophobia. The Runnymede Trust, in their hugely influential 1997 report Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, defined Islamophobia at its most basic as ‘unfounded hostility towards Islam’. It also highlighted certain ‘closed’ views of Muslims which tend to constitute Islamophobia, including: ‘Islam seen as a single monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to new realities; Islam seen as separate and other – (a) not having any aims or values in common with other cultures (b) not affected by them (c) not influencing them; Islam seen as inferior to the West – barbaric, irrational, primitive, sexist; Islam seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism,

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engaged in ‘a clash of civilisations’; Islam seen as a political ideology, used for political or military advantage’. Despite the report being written fully two decades ago, these criteria remain key features of Islamophobic discourse (Runnymede Trust 1997). Not unrelatedly, the scapegoating and demonisation of outsiders is integral to far-right politics. In the most extreme cases, this has historically manifested itself as violent anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. After the Second World War, as migration from the Commonwealth arrived on British shores, blacks and Asians were subjected to similar treatment on the grounds of their colour and race. Yet at the turn of the 21st century, particularly following 9/11, Muslims and the religion of Islam have become the dominant out-group targeted by the far right in Britain and beyond. More troubling, far-right rhetoric has fed off a more subtle ‘liberal’ Islamophobia (Mondon and Winter 2017). The Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks conducted by al-Qaeda in the United States on 11 September 2001, which led to the murder of just under 3,000 people, led to a significant backlash for Britain’s Muslim population. A report commissioned by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia published less than a year after the attacks demonstrated that 9/11 had led to an increase in attacks on Muslims. While the press reported on these attacks, ‘a disproportionate amount of coverage was devoted to extremist Muslim groups and British Muslims who declared their willingness to join an Islamic war against the West’ (Allen and Nielsen 2002, p. 29). Furthermore, although many leading politicians called for calm, others were not so sensitive to events. Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said she ‘had not heard enough condemnation [of the 9/11 attacks] from the Muslim priests [sic; referring to Imams]’ (BBC News 2001). Such sentiments, namely that British Muslims either being extremists or not doing enough to distance themselves from extremists, have become common refrains in Islamophobic discourse. The far-right British National Party sought to capitalise on anger towards the British Muslim community almost immediately and were the first party in Britain to ‘weaponise’ Islamophobia in after 2001, making attacks on Islam a key focus of their campaign literature. It offered a convenient opportunity for the party, who were seeking to ‘rebrand’ their earlier stances on race and immigration, which held that a Jewish conspiracy was controlling global politics. The newly-installed leader, Nick Griffin, believed the ‘clash of civilisations’ between Islam and the West was now the narrative which the party should focus on: ‘This is the threat that can bring us to power. This is the Big Issue on which we must concentrate in order to wake people up and make them look at what we have to offer all round’ (Griffin, quoted in Copsey 2007, p. 77). The party’s 2005 manifesto spoke of the threats Islam posed ‘to our democracy, traditions and freedoms’, and pledged to crack down on the ‘creeping Islamification and dhimmitude of Britain’ (British National Party 2005). The BNP’s focus on Islam appeared to bring the party some success, fuelled by wider events such as racial tension and localised violence between Asian and white communities of Bradford and Oldham in 2001 and, in particular, the 7 July 2005 terror attacks in London. The BNP picked up dozens of council seats, a seat on the London Assembly and 2 European Parliament seats. However, they declined sharply after this final triumph in 2009 and drifted into irrelevance shortly thereafter. The English Defence League took their place as the dominant Islamophobic political outlet on the far right, but differed in several respects. The EDL was not a political party, but a street-based social movement, whose provocative marches drew crowds of 1,000s. It also sought to distance itself from far-right politics, by claiming to be pro-Jewish and anti-racist – merely attacking extremism rather than a race. As Nigel Copsey argued shortly after their founding:

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[While the EDL] projects itself as a defender of democratic freedoms from ‘Islamic fascism’ – it is hard to escape the racism that permeates the ranks. This racism is not so much ‘old-school’ racism based on skin colour, but rather ‘selective racism’ – a cultural racism directed at all (and not just militant) Muslims (‘Pakis’). (Copsey 2011, p. 5) EDL activists also referred to influential public figures and commentators who influenced them. Some were on the far right, such as Dutch politician Geert Wilders. However, others were less clearly affiliated, such as newspaper columnist Melanie Phillips; the commentator and Associate Director of right-wing think tank The Henry Jackson Society, Douglas Murray; or the former Telegraph journalist Andrew Gilligan (Busher 2013, p. 70). It is clear that while the far right have sought to rebrand themselves as non-racist they have found a climate where it is increasingly possible to claim that no transgression from the mainstream has occurred. The example of Melanie Phillips is revealing. She is a regular commentator in the national press, for the right-wing tabloid The Daily Mail and centre-right broadsheet The Times. Phillips regularly writes polemics criticising Islam, immigration and multiculturalism. The central thesis of her 2007 book, Londonistan: How Britain is Creating a Terror State from Within, argues that Britain’s Muslim community poses a threat to the country’s security (Phillips 2007). Following the 2015 refugee crisis, she argued against allowing refugees into the country, arguing that it would ‘alter the cultural balance of the country forever’. Using the language of the far right’s ‘clash of civilisation’ thesis, Phillips argued: The Arab and Muslim world is disintegrating into chaos, war and terror. The ascendancy of radical Islam is producing untold barbarism. The West-imposed model of the nation state is collapsing into tribal warfare. A dying culture has turned murderously upon itself whilst trying to simultaneously conquer the wider world. (Phillips 2015) It is difficult to imagine such rhetoric regarding other ethnic or religious groups in Britain – such as Jewish or black people – passing unopposed. As this instance exemplifies, the media have played a large role in the normalisation of Islamophobic sentiment. A report by the University of Exeter’s European Muslim Research Centre demonstrated a direct link between portrayals of Muslims in the media and hate crime. It showed that ‘assailants of Muslims are invariably motivated by a negative view of Muslims they have acquired from either mainstream or extremist nationalist reports or commentaries in the media’ (Githens-Mazer and Lambert 2010, p. 11). More recently, Leicester University’s Centre for Hate Studies has argued that hate crimes have been ‘fuelled and legitimised by politicians and the media’ (University of Leicester 2016). It is this context which has seen more moderate political parties and individuals criticise Islam, such as the UK Independence Party. The UK Independence Party (UKIP), initially founded as a single-issue party in the early 1990s to oppose Britain’s membership of the European Union, transformed into a right-wing populist party under the leadership of Nigel Farage. Farage always rejected the claim that UKIP were far right. Yet he often could be found making Islamophobic comments, such as in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack in 2015, where he referred to Muslims across Europe as a ‘fifth column’. UKIP’s hard-line stances on immigration and multiculturalism often spoke to Islamophobic tropes, while the party gave voice to individuals who singled out Islam for criticism. Gerard Batten, a long-serving MEP, has described Islam as a ‘death cult’. Farage’s replacement as leader, Paul Nuttall, campaigned in the 2017 General Election for a ban on the burkah and ‘sharia courts’ on the grounds of ‘integration’ (Elgot 2017). 354

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The party instrumentalised the Rotherham grooming scandal to criticise the Muslim community, with the party’s Yorkshire MEP Jane Collins claiming that political correctness enabled Muslim grooming gangs, leading to young white girls being ‘gang-raped, beaten and threatened at gunpoint’ by Muslim men. During the party’s 2017 leadership campaign, Ann Marie Waters, the founder of the Islamophobic organisation ‘Sharia Watch’, described Islam as a ‘cancer’. Waters was the bookies’ favourite to win the leadership on an anti-Muslim ticket shortly before the leadership vote, but finished a distant second behind Henry Bolton. This first section has sought to demonstrate the various ways in which Islamophobia manifests itself on the far right, and how anti-Muslim ideas have seeped into the mainstream. We will now move away from elite discourse in politics and the media towards the impact of Islamophobic ideas ‘on the ground’ – hate crime. It will initially reflect on some of the challenges facing the reporting of hate crime, before analysing what is known about anti-Muslim hate crime based upon quantitative data collected from the Tell MAMA hate crime reporting service.

Hate crime Obviously, anti-Muslim hate crime is not the only form of hate crime. Since 2014, reports analysing Tell MAMA data by Feldman and Littler have advocated the disaggregation of recorded hate crime, which now takes place in England and Wales, and is separated into race, religion, sexuality, disability and transgender hate crimes. Some individual police forces, such as Greater Manchester Police have also started including ‘alternative lifestyles’ such as goths or punks, while there is a burgeoning debate over whether to include misogyny as another strand of recorded hate crime. Separately analysing these different types of incidents, as well as online and offline attacks, can help paint a more detailed picture of either geographical ‘hotspots’ offline and ‘trigger events’ online. The former, ‘hotspots’, refers to recorded locations in the UK where a specific strand of hate crime victim, a disabled or LGBTI person, for example, might be at risk of higher incidents of hate crime – although just why this is still remains unclear. Take ethnically-based hate crimes, which accounted for 78% of all recorded incidents in the 2016/2017 survey for England and Wales, released in October 2017 (Home Office 2017). Is a person more likely to be the victim of one of these 62,685 recorded racial hate crimes in locations with, say, higher or lower percentages of BAME persons? Or again, is an attack more or less likely in places with newer ethnic communities, or instead, in places that are more or less affluent, or even politically more left- or more right-wing? This area of research is in its infancy, and owes much to the employment of ‘big data’ approaches to quantify areas of greatest concern. Accordingly, these are basic questions that are only now starting to be addressed with disaggregated hate crimes data – a pressing task that should be, likewise, energetically taken up by all 44 forces in England, Scotland and Wales. In terms of ‘trigger’ events, which will be addressed further in this chapter, Britain’s decision to leave the European Union in June 2016 repeatedly has been highlighted as a factor in the well over a year since the vote. The 2015/2016 hate crimes survey for England and Wales contained an annex that showed a 41% increase in hate crimes in July 2016 – one month after the vote to leave the EU. This is supported by other surveys, reports and much anecdotal evidence, meaning that, for some perpetrators at least, the Brexit vote acted as a kind of ‘licence’ to attack innocent people on the basis of their perceived ethnicity, religion, disability or sexuality (for instance, there was a 196% increase in LGBT attacks). That this problem was exacerbated by the Brexit result is highlighted in a scathing report by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which identified incidents of 355

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‘racist media coverage’ that entailed a ‘negative portrayal of ethnic or ethno-religious minority communities, immigrants, asylum-seekers and refugees by the media in the State party, particularly in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, as well as the rise of racist hate speech on the Internet.’ (UNCERD 2016, p. 4) In their summary findings, the August 2016 report for the UK and Northern Ireland included in their ‘Concerns and Recommendations’: The Committee is seriously concerned at the sharp increase in the number of racist hate crimes especially in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in the weeks prior to and following the referendum on the membership of the European Union held on 23 June 2016. In particular, the Committee is deeply concerned that the referendum campaign was marked by divisive, anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric, and that many politicians and prominent political figures not only failed to condemn it, but also created and entrenched prejudices, thereby emboldening individuals to carry out acts of intimidation and hate towards ethnic or ethno-religious minority communities and people who are visibly different. The Committee remains concerned that despite the recent increase in the reporting of hate crimes, the problem of underreporting persists, and the gap between reported cases and successful prosecution remains significant. As a result, a large number of racist hate crimes seem to go unpunished. It also remains concerned at the negative portrayal of ethnic or ethno-religious minority communities, immigrants, asylum-seekers and refugees by the media in the State party, particularly in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, as well as the rise of racist hate speech on the Internet. (UNCERD 2016, p. 4) Britain undoubtedly has a growing problem with hate crime. The most recent national data (excluding Scotland) shows a 29% increase from 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017 when compared to the year before – which itself saw a 19% increase from the previous year. 2016/17 was in fact the biggest rise since the series began in 2011/2012. According to the Home Office, ‘the increase over the last year is thought to reflect both a genuine rise in hate crime around the time of the EU referendum and also due to ongoing improvements in crime recording by the police’ (Home Office 2017); meaning that increased knowledge about, and willingness to report, hate attacks – clearly a positive – can actually be driving the ostensibly ‘negative’ of increased incidents. That may well be true, even if under-reporting of hate crime remains a major hurdle for both police forces and third sector organisations like Tell MAMA or its organisational model, the Community Security Trust (the CST; which monitors anti-Jewish hate crimes). For over three decades, the latter group has shown that building up community trust, raising awareness among vulnerable communities, and forming strong links with enforcement and government agencies is the best way of establishing a picture of how, and where, and even when, hate crime can effect specific communities (it is also worth noting that third sector agencies have higher trust than policing bodies: in January 2014 the UK Standards Agency withdrew the ‘gold standard’ status from ‘police crime figures’ due to allegations of ‘fiddling’ (Travis 2014). They have also shown that the more detailed the reporting, the better: details of street-based attacks include not only the words or actions used, but specific location and time of day of the attack; the gender of victim and perpetrator; whether the victim ‘looked Jewish’ (Community Security Trust 2016, p. 7); and whether the perpetrator was perceived to be acting spontaneously. (The same goes with online attacks, with the perpetrator’s gender often substituted for social media platform, avatar and screenshot of text and/or images.) Three final points on the general nature of reporting are worth bearing in mind before we turn to the next section on anti-Muslim attacks. First, as suggested above, like other forms of 356

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crime, hate crime can also be opportunistic. That is to say, circumstance or context can play a key role; in fact, premeditated hate crimes seem to be in the minority. Second, the word used twice above, perception, is vital in the matter of hate crimes. This extends to the definition of hate incident itself, here from the Hate Crimes Operational Guidance on Policing: ‘any non-crime incident which is perceived by the victim, or any other person, to be motivated (wholly or partially) by a hostility or prejudice’ (College of Policing 2014, p. 3). How a victim perceives an attack is therefore crucial. This is especially the case in terms of what is called ‘intersectionality’ – where a victim might be, say, black and Muslim, or Jewish and disabled, etc. In the words of a September 2016 Scottish government ‘Report of the Independent Advisory Group on Hate Crime, Prejudice and Community Cohesion’: Intersectionality refers to the interconnected nature of social categories. The intersectionality of hate crime was considered to be a crucial factor by most of the stakeholders who took part in this research, and was also emphasised in the literature and research studies consulted. It is important to think about how experiences of victimisation based on multiple protected characteristics might be better captured both in quantitative and qualitative research – for example by considering the statistics at an individual level – and addressed more effectively in responses to hate crime. This is recommended as a subject area for future research. (Scottish Government 2016, p. 27) One final point to bear in mind, which is surely the most important: the matter of aiding victims. Being attacked for your identity can take many forms – online or offline, physical or verbal – but there are some important consistencies. Being the victim of a hate crime is painful; it typically makes victims feel vulnerable and anxious, and by its very nature undercuts levels of community cohesion. Listening to and caring for victims, lowering barriers to reporting, and taking these attacks seriously are what we all owe, and what we are all owed, in this country.

Islamophobic hate crime We will now turn to what are called, often mistakenly ‘Islamophobic’ incidents. Mistaken, because these are attacks on people for their identity rather than simply merely ‘incidents’; but also because it is unlikely that ‘phobia’, or fear of Muslims, is really the central issue. In a 2016 book entitled Fear of Muslims?, for instance, the editors Douglas Pratt and Rachel Woodlock suggest that we are perhaps, rather, dealing with ‘Islamoprejudice’. In a post 9/11 era – and in the UK, 7/7 –anti-Muslim prejudice has become so ‘normalised’ that ‘hyper-critical statements that would otherwise be recognised as prejudice if expressed about other historically vilified groups such as Jews and Blacks’ (Pratt and Woodlock 2016, p. 7). A similar point was raised during the case of Channel Four News presenter Fatima Manji, who was attacked by The Sun columnist Kelvin Mackenzie for wearing a hijab while reporting on the July 2016 terror attack in Nice (Mackenzie has since had his contract with The Sun terminated after comparing mixedrace footballer Ross Barkley to a ‘gorilla at the zoo’). A complaint made to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) about Mackenzie’s comments by Manji and ITN news was rejected. In the appeal, Manji, said she and her family had to take safety precautions after she was ‘singled out personally by Kelvin MacKenzie because of my religion’. The letter, seen by The Guardian, says: ‘This was akin to hate speech and incitement against an individual. Freedom of expression does not stretch to allow such speech if the newspaper personally 357

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targets the individual.’ She concludes: ‘Many will question when would IPSO ever find a breach of the clause prohibiting prejudicial references to an individual’s religion’ (Weaver 2016). In an earlier and more well-known sentiment expressed in January 2011 Baroness Sayeeda Warsi argued that anti-Muslim prejudice had ‘passed the dinner table test’ of acceptable conversation, stemming from a ‘sense of suspicion towards those subjects whose ultimate loyalty is presumed to lie with a supranational religion’: One of the most important aspects of our identity is our belief in equality before the law. But deep, entrenched anti-Muslim bigotry challenges that tradition because it implies that one section of society is less deserving of our protection than the rest. I commend those who understand and condemn the cancer of Islamophobia . . . The deeper Islamophobia seeps into our culture, the easier becomes the task of the extremist recruiting sergeant. (Warsi 2011) Like the aforementioned UN report for Britain, these findings are in close keeping with a trio of reports by Teesside University’s Centre for Fascist, Anti-fascist and Post-fascist Studies (hereafter CFAPS), published in summer 2013, summer 2014 and summer 2015. These are thus within the context of what an increasing number of scholars, following Aristotle Kallis’s terminology, have termed the ‘mainstreaming’ of anti-Muslim prejudice through the ‘breaking of taboos’ around the public expression of bigotry and xenophobia (Kallis 2013). Stocker has similarly argued that, more generally, 21st century Britain has witnessed is ‘the growing mainstreaming of far-right ideas and their co-option by more centrist political forces’ (Stocker 2017). In now turning to the figures from the three CFAPS reports between 2013 and 2015, it bears remembering that this is based on self-reporting data, with recorded metrics by Tell MAMA of variable quality (such as that related to location – e.g. London, a specific borough, or even a postcode). It is not, and cannot be, a representative sample of the country as a whole. That said, these figures remain the most detailed we have available for the 4–5% of the UK population that is Muslim – which is roughly ten times the size, for instance, of the Jewish community in Britain. The 2012/13 report saw a total of 584 cases reported to Tell MAMA in their first year of operation. Of the 130 hate crimes taking place offline, 55% took place on the street – meaning that it is likely more than half were opportunistic attacks that may have been prompted by circumstance, context or ‘speedy’ radicalisation (if such a thing exists). While this is in keeping with our formative understandings of hate crimes, the next figure certainly is not. In fact, it has not been replicated in any other disaggregated figures: many more women than men are victims in public: fully 80% of recorded offline victims were women wearing ‘visibly Muslim’ clothing at the time of the attack. Put simply, hate crime overwhelmingly tends to be male on male, with the exception of anti-Muslim attacks, the majority of which are male on female (fully 78% of reported offline perpetrators were male). Above all, the first report showed that fully 300 of the 434 reported online attacks had some kind of link to the far right (which excludes UKIP in this report): an EDL hashtag, reference to the BNP or National Front, hotlinks to a counter-jihad website, and so on. While some have dismissed online attacks as merely keyboard warriors expressing unpopular opinions via Facebook or Twitter, it is worth stating that nearly two-thirds of reported online hate attacks threatened offline action. This can extend to posts with personal information like a home address or details of family members – let alone threats of real world violence – which, of course, can be enormously intrusive and upsetting. Moreover, online attacks can also create a ‘tsunami’ effect whereby Facebook friends or Twitter connection ‘pile on’ to a victim who is being attacked by an offender’s contacts – via retweets, under the line comments, or Facebook shares. 358

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Finally, the data from the first year suggests that far-right participation in anti-Muslim attacks is oversized – especially online. The organised far right in Britain remains comparatively small in terms of the population as a whole: less than 5% nationally. But offenders related to far-right groups account for four times this amount in offline attacks, and a staggering fourteen times this amount for online attacks. This is because less than a fifth of offline attacks, 19%, identified offline links to the far right. While this number is small, it is not that surprising: offenders usually don’t typically wear EDL or other far-right apparel, and unless they also shout slogans affiliated with these groups, such a link can be difficult to verify. That is far less the case with online attacks, where nearly 70% were linked to the far right by way of a hashtag or other affiliation (Copsey et al. 2013). This suggests that, especially online, there is a small, hard core of far-right offenders – perhaps serial or repeat offenders. A corresponding recommendation here is to look more closely at far-right groups’ participation in anti-Muslim attacks, ranging from those specifically engaging with Islamoprejudice as a central ideological tenet – such as Britain First and the various ‘defence leagues’ (EDL, Infidels, etc.) – to neo-fascist groups that like the National Front and the BNP who advocate anti-Muslim bigotry alongside anti-Semitic, antigay or ethically-based attacks. Either way, all of these groups have had it too easy in terms of the policing and prosecution of anti-Muslim hate crimes. CFAPS’s second report, released in July 2014, had a different emphasis: ‘cumulative extremism’. This term is used to refer to the cyclical ratcheting up of violent activity between opposing communities, with acts of violence perpetrated by a sub-group (however small) of a given community against members of another community, triggering acts of violent retribution by members of a sub-population of the second community against members of the first. This process is often seen to be self-perpetuating, akin to a downward spiral, with each act of violence triggering a response that begets further violence. In the just over ten years since this term was coined by the political scientist Roger Eatwell (2006), the idea of diametrically opposed ideologies goading each other into more extreme acts – most often in the scholarly literature referring to jihadi Islamists and the far right – has taken off in policy circles, particularly in terms of Prevent. Yet there has been precious little empirical evidence to back up these interpretations, instead often relying on specific cases, such as that in June 2012 when six jihadi Islamists were apprehended on the way to a 750-strong EDL demonstration in Dewsbury with guns, knives and a homemade explosive device. All received sentences of more than 18 years each. To date, the most detailed evidence to support the ‘cumulative extremism’ thesis came in the wake of the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich by two Islamists on 22 May 2013. The wake of this appalling attack saw nearly four times more online and offline reports – a spike of 373% recorded in the Tell MAMA data – in the week after 22 May 2013 when compared with the week beforehand. Steep spikes in attacks on Muslims were also recorded in this period by Manchester, London and the West Midlands constabularies (at the time, the only large police forces disaggregating hate-incidents). Therefore, it is unlikely this resulted from simply higher rates of reporting, or greater awareness of Tell MAMA; in fact, fully 5 of 6 hate incidents reported to the latter were not reported to the police: indeed, only 3% of victims of online attacks went to both Tell MAMA and the police during this period. Addressing the problem of under-reporting is surely amongst the greatest challenges in better understanding hate crimes. That is to say, of the 734 hate incidents recorded in our second report – 599 reports of online attacks, and 135 reports for those offline – probably represent a small proportion of the total anti-Muslim incidents in Britain between 1 May 2013 and 28 February 2014. Nor were these only words, troubling as that still would be: in the three months after Drummer Rigby’s murder, Tell MAMA documented 34 anti-Muslim attacks on property, most notably in places of worship, ranging from graffiti to arson. There were also 13 cases of extreme violence recorded, 359

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often resulting in a victim’s hospitalisation. CFAPS’ second report, in short, suggested that antiMuslim attacks were getting worse, not better. Perhaps the most revealing figure relating to ‘cumulative extremism’ in CFAPS’s second report was the monthly breakdown of incidents. It was bad enough that roughly half the recorded attacks over the 10-month recording period took place in the 9 weeks following Drummer Rigby’s murder. Just as troublingly, there was also an elevated ‘baseline’ of attacks, meaning the expected number of attacks per day, week or month increased palpably in the six months after 22 May 2013. Even after August 2013, a higher ‘baseline’ could be discerned, whereby average month-by-month attacks were higher in later 2013 than they had been a year earlier. In sum, Muslims in Britain were at decidedly increased risk of public attack for their faith, in particular through online abuse, in the days and even weeks following Drummer Rigby’s murder. While these findings represented stark changes from our first report, some aspects of our findings clearly remained consistent: the increased likelihood of online incidents – particularly of anti-Muslim abuse – second; the majority of recorded offline cases involving female victims; and third, the large proportion of far-right perpetrators (albeit lower, at 40% of online incidents, most likely due to changes in recording procedures by Tell MAMA, most notably a ‘drop down bar’ to record specific far-right organisations and the removal of all ‘open response’ questions). Nevertheless, the conclusions were in keeping with the previous year: ‘Trigger’ events like the murder of Drummer Rigby clearly magnify the possibility of far-right groups and others victimising Muslims simply for who they are and what they believe. While Britain remains a place of inclusion, stubbornly high figures of anti-Muslim incidents also remain, and demand attention from policymakers and all people of goodwill in Britain alike. (Feldman and Littler 2014) Use of the term ‘trigger’ events is important here, and formed the backdrop for CFAPS’s third report from last June. This final report covered the 12-month period between 1 March 2014 and 28 February 2015, with online hate incidents covering 402 of 548 attacks, or again about two thirds, of all recorded data analysed from Tell MAMA. In keeping with our previous two reports, the majority of offline attacks were perpetrated by white men against ‘visibly Muslim’ women. Importantly however, we added a degree of nuance to our previous analysis of ‘cumulative extremism’. There, the aftermath of an outrageous daytime stabbing attack on an off-duty soldier in London was captured on smartphone, and then swiftly disseminated around the world; the murderers Michael Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo were shown with literally bloody hands and unanimously associated with jihadi Islamism. While in terms of guilt, of course, none of directly relates to the nearly 3 million Muslims in Britain going about their daily business, the frame presented by some of the tabloids criticised in the UN report above, as well as that quickly snowballing on social media platforms, carried a ‘mainstreamed’ message of Islamoprejudice. As we saw previously, this added up to a perfect storm of elements leading to a sharp rise in anti-Muslim attacks, both online and in person. To be sure, this picture of ‘cumulative extremism’ is useful. But important variations can exist, as the nature of apparent jihadi Islamist attacks recorded in 2014/15 show regarding the 7 days following terrorist attacks in Paris, Copenhagen and Sydney. Briefly, the Paris attack on 7 January 2015 saw a mass shooting at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, followed by a related anti-Semitic assault on a kosher grocery store. In all, 17 victims were murdered and three gunmen were killed; it so rocked France that millions took 360

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to the streets on 11 January, including dozens of European leaders assembling in Paris, under the banner ‘Je suis Charlie’. A month later, another jihadi Islamist assaulted a public event in Copenhagen, followed by a shooting outside the city’s Great Synagogue, which left two people dead and five innocents injured. Although like the Paris and Copenhagen attacks – perpetrated by an adult male with a violent criminal past, with assailants ultimately killed by police – in the case of the 14 December 2014, 18-hour Sydney hostage standoff, the circumstances were somewhat different. There, while Man Haron Monis claimed an ISIS affiliation, he was swiftly identified as having a history of mental illness, thus providing an alternative frame for the ongoing media coverage. This raises questions about the role of the media in mediating and framing news coverage – which seems to be a vital pre-requisite for ‘cumulative extremism’. Acts of jihadi Islamist extremism come to the attention of far-right groups via the mainstream media, filtering through a complex network of blogs, social media pages and forums before reaching their final audience (Littler and Feldman 2015).

Conclusion Ultimately, it may be that the severity of the ‘cumulative extremism’ cycle is, in part, determined by the level and tone of media coverage. Where media outlets might single-mindedly stress the jihadi Islamist, or even Muslim, nature of an attack, devoting significant coverage to this interpretation, a violent response is likely to be greater than in cases where the religious background of the attacker is downplayed, or rejected in favour of an alternative explanation – as with the Sydney attacks, where the attacker was identified as mentally unwell and with a criminal past. Similarly, where a terror attack receives greater or more sustained media attention – as with the 60-hour, multisite, coverage of the attacks in Paris in January 2015, or the domestic significance of Drummer Rigby’s murder in May 2013 – it is likely to generate a more hateful and inductive response than where the media offer lower levels of coverage (as in Copenhagen and, especially, Sydney. Importantly, the latter is 10 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, with the attack commencing in the early hours of 15 December 2016 in the UK). This raises very direct questions about the effects of irresponsible journalism, and the dangers of uninformed speculation as to terrorist motivation. While it is naturally important for the media to present honest and impartial coverage, granting greater voice to more nuanced or alternative explanations of terrorist motivation – as in Sydney – may do much to reduce the ferocity of the ‘cumulative extremism’ backlash – and ensure that the wider Muslim population in the UK remains trusted, heard, and protected. And if this is the case with ‘cumulative extremism’, so too with ‘trigger’ events more generally, which, as was made plain after ‘Brexit’, need not be a terrorist attack at all.

References Allen, C. and Nielsen, J. 2002. Summary Report on Islamophobia in the EU after 11 September 2001. European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. BBC News. 2001. Thatcher Comments ‘Encourage’ Racism. BBC News. Retrieved from http://news. bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1578377.stm (accessed 24 October 2017). British National Party. 2005. Rebuilding British Democracy. General Election Manifesto. Busher, J. 2013. Grassroots Activism in the English Defence League: Discourse and Public (Dis)order. In M. Taylor et al. (eds), Extreme Right-Wing Political Violence and Terrorism, pp. 65–83. London: Bloomsbury Academic. College of Policing. 2014. Hate Crime Operational Guidance. College of Policing. Retrieved from www. app.college.police.uk/app-content/major-investigation-and-public-protection/hate-crime/ (accessed 24 October 2017). 361

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Community Security Trust. 2016. Antisemitic Incidents: Report 2016. Retrieved from https://cst.org. uk/news/blog/2016/08/04/cst-antisemitic-incidents-report-january-june-2016-published-today (accessed 24 October 2017). Copsey, N. 2007. Changing Course or Changing Clothes? Reflections on the Ideological Evolution of the British National Party 1999–2006. Patterns of Prejudice, 41(1), 61–82. Copsey, N. 2011. The English Defence League: Challenging Our Country and Our Values of Social Inclusion, Fairness and Equality. London: Faith Matters. Copsey, N., et al. 2013. Anti-Muslim Hate Crime and the Far Right. Middlesbrough: Centre for Fascist, AntiFascist and Post-Fascist Studies. Eatwell, R. 2006. Community Cohesion and Cumulative Extremism in Contemporary Britain. The Political Quarterly, 77 (2), 214–216. Elgot, J. 2017. Ukip to Campaign to Ban Burqa and Sharia Courts, Says Paul Nuttall. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/23/ukip-to-campaign-to-ban-burka-andsharia-courts-says-paul-nuttall (accessed 24 October 2017). Feldman, M and Littler, M. 2014. Tell MAMA Reporting 2013/14 Anti-Muslim Overview, Analysis and ‘Cumulative Extremism’. Middlesbrough: Centre for Fascist, Anti-Fascist and Fascist and Post-Fascist Studies. Githens, M and Lambert, R. 2010. Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: A London Case Study. Exeter: European Muslim Research Centre. Home Office. 2017. Hate Crime, England and Wales, 2016/17. London: Home Office. Retrieved from www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/652136/hate-crime-1617hosb1717.pdf (accessed 26 October 2017). Kallis, A. 2013. Breaking Taboos and ‘Mainstreaming the Extreme’: The Debates on Restricting Islamic Symbols in Contemporary Europe In R. Wodak et al. (eds), Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse, pp. 55–71. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Littler, M. and Feldman, M. 2015. Tell MAMA Reporting 2014/15 Annual Monitoring, Cumulative Extremism and Policy Implications. Middlesbrough: Centre for Fascist, Anti-Fascist and Post-Fascist Studies. Mondon, A. and Winter, A. 2017. Articulations of Islamophobia: From the Extreme to the Mainstream? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40 (13), 2151–2179. Phillips, M. 2007. Londonistan: How Britain is Growing a Terror State from Within. London: Gibson Square. Phillips, M. 2015. Accepting These Migrants is a Huge Mistake. The Times. Retrieved from www.thetimes. co.uk/article/accepting-these-migrants-is-a-huge-mistake-dfmk5r9s2dq (accessed 24 October 2017). Pratt, D and Woodlock, R. 2016. Fear of Muslims? International Perspectives on Islamophobia. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. Runnymede Trust. 1997. Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All. London: Runnymede Trust. Scottish Government. 2016. Report of the Independent Advisory Group on Hate Crime, Prejudice and Community Cohesion. Edinburgh: Government of Scotland. Retrieved from www.gov.scot/ Publications/2016/09/3565/downloads (accessed 24 October 2017). Stocker, P. 2017. English Uprising: Brexit and the Mainstreaming of the Far Right. London: Melville House UK. Travis, A. 2014. Police Crime Figures Lose Official Status Over Claims of Fiddling. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/15/police-crime-figures-status-claimsfiddling (accessed 24 October 2017). UNCERD. 2016. Concluding Observations on the Combined Twenty-First to Twenty-Third Periodic Reports of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Radical Discrimination. Retrieved from www.ein.org.uk/news/un-committee-elimination-racialdiscrimination-concerned-negative-portrayal-immigrants-and (accessed 24 October 2017). University of Cambridge. 2016. University of Leicester. 2016. ‘Politicians and Media Fuel Hate Crime in Britain’, Say University of Leicester Experts. Retrieved from www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2016/june/politicians-and-mediafuel-hate-crime-in-britain-2019-say-university-of-leicester-experts (accessed 24 October 2017). Warsi, S. 2011. Baroness Warsi Speech. Speech delivered at Leicester University, 20 January. Retrieved from www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/for-journalists/baroness-warsi-speech (accessed 24 October 2017). Weaver, M. 2016. Channel 4 Presenter Says Hijab Ruling Means it’s ‘Open Season’ on Muslims. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/20/channel-4-hijab-ruling-muslimsopen-season-press-regulator-fatima-manji-kelvin-mackenzie (accessed 24 October 2017).

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29 Islamophobia and the radical right in Europe Nostalgia or alternative utopia? Aristotle Kallis

Introduction The ideology of the radical right may be extremely hard to pin down and classify, ranging from extreme social conservatism to ‘soft’ populism with often liberal hues to violent activism; and from seemingly respectable, suave agents of parliamentary democracy to groups with para-military characteristics or even terrorist clandestine links (Mudde 2016). The agents of the radical right seem to disagree on at least as many diagnoses and strategies as those that they profess to share. Yet, in the last decade, strong points of ideological and political convergence have started to crystallise, turning the radical right into a truly transnational European and occasionally trans-Atlantic force with ever-stronger presence, noise, and impact. The topicality of a new range of issues, such as immigration, international terrorism, national sovereignty, globalisation, and the effects of the worldwide economic crisis, have created a political milieu that has allowed the radical right not only to thrive but also to unite its otherwise disparate and fragmented forces (Politico 2015). In spite of their ideological differences and political disagreements, a visceral hostility to Islam lies at the centre of the contemporary radical right’s ideological profile and political message. It is on this issue that a sequence of its other political priorities have intersected: defending national, ‘European’ or ‘Western’ values; putting a brake on growing migration inflows from north Africa and Asia; waging a ‘war’ against radical ‘Islamist’ and Jihadi groups; challenging state multiculturalism; fighting against (national and ‘European’) identity dilution; campaigning for a ‘fortress Europe’; scrapping the European Union’s Schengen border zone; even destroying the EU as a whole; as well as addressing unemployment and falling living standards on behalf of the national community (Krzyżanowski 2013; Loch and Norocel 2015; Privot 2014). Islamophobia, a socially constructed and reproduced form of racism directed at Islam and people with a Muslim background, has had deep roots in European societies that, in different forms, go back decades or even centuries (Runnymede 1997, 2017; Hafez 2012). Such roots have also traditionally spanned national and political boundaries. What, however, had been originally linked to a particular form of xenophobia, racism, and primarily religious/cultural intolerance, has recently undergone two important mutations. First, it has become the core of a vision of radical change with strong counter-utopian attributes in direct, visceral opposition to the hegemony 363

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of post-Second World War liberalism. Second, it has mutated into the most effective platform of international ideological convergence between national groups and parties operating in many countries across Europe and other parts of the world (Vieten and Poynting 2016; Hafez 2014). The marriage between right-wing populism and anti-immigrant/Islamophobic mobilisation has proved potent, in the polls and even more so in terms of political and cultural influence on mainstream discourses. According to the classic definition by Cas Mudde, populism is an ideology that considers society to be divided into two antagonistic groups, the homogeneous ‘people’ and the corrupt ‘elite’. In this bottom-up alternative vision to the current perception of establishment politics increasingly distant from the concerns of ‘real’ people, populists argue for a new kind of politics as an expression of the general will of the people (Mudde 2010). This supposedly homogeneous ‘people’ is pitted against the forces of internationalism, globalisation, seemingly uncontrolled movement, and cultural diversity, which are articulated as direct threats to its existential security and welfare. Control, therefore, needs to be wrested from these sources of power through a number of strategies, including economic nationalism and an embrace of protectionism, political chauvinism, isolationism, reassertion of strict border controls, reversal of previous international commitments to diversity and human rights, and an expansive range of discriminatory measures targeting those excluded from the narrow definition of ‘the people’ (Zaslove 2008). In this context, Muslims as both immigrants and deemed as a culturally alien, indeed threatening presence ‘in our midst’ (Meer 2013) have been operationalised by the radical right as the most extreme international threat to the security and prosperity of ‘the people’. In its own way, Islamophobia has functioned as a powerful node of a wider call to radical action that is both anti-utopian (averting a perceived unfolding catastrophe by projecting as a warning an extreme version of the present) and utopian in its own right (unlocking an alternative actionable blueprint for and path to a better a better future) (Levitas 1990, pp. 165–167; Kumar 1987; Kumar and Bann 1993). Therefore I argue that, in order to understand the dynamics of the radical right’s embrace of Islamophobia, ‘utopia’ is a far more accurate and useful conceptual category than regressive nostalgia for a mono-cultural, territorially rooted, and politically inward-looking alternative vision.

Islamophobia as (trans-national) nostalgia In 2017, Douglas Murray painted a bleak picture of the future of ‘Europe . . . as civilisation’. He argued that this amounted to a ‘suicide’ and that, ‘by the end of the lifespans of most people alive Europe will not be Europe and the people of Europe will have lost the only place in the world we had to call home’ (Murray 2017, pp. 1–2). Predictably, immigration and Islam featured prominently in his shortlist of existential threats, alongside the perceived nonchalance of liberal elites to the challenge and the creeping loss of a sense of distinct cultural identity among Europeans themselves. Neither Murray’s message nor his tone is of course original; self-appointed prophets of cultural pessimism from Nietzsche to Novalis to Madison Grant have in the past heralded the impending death of ‘the West’, of ‘Europe’, of Christianity, of the ‘white race’, and so on (Pick 1993; Svenungsson 2014; Spiro 2009). But Murray’s book also represents a new genre of post-apocalyptic – non-fictional and fictional – writing that sets the image of the migrant Muslim at the heart of an anti-utopian vision of the (immediate) future (cf. Houellebecq 2016; Sarrazin 2010). Some of the most influential definitions of the contemporary radical right have attributed its appeal to its combination of rejection of the present status quo and retreating to a deeply nostalgic image of some mythical national or civilisational past (Betz 2018; Betz and Johnson 2004; Canovan 2004). They have underlined the anti-progressive message of the radical right 364

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in an attempt to ‘reverse the erosion of the established patterns of ethnic political and cultural dominance’. Zygmunt Bauman (2017) illustrated how the contemporary utopian gaze has been redirected towards an idealised image of a reassuring past rather than an aspiration for a different future. Paul Taggart’s concept of a ‘heartland’ is an even more evocative description of this nostalgic perspective of the populist radical right. Taggart (2004, p. 274) noted that [t]he heartland is a construction of an ideal world but unlike utopian conceptions, it is constructed retrospectively from the past – it is in essence a past-derived vision projected onto the present as that which has been lost. Unlike other ideologies that derive their visions of the future from the key values (e.g. egalitarianism or communitarianism), populism derives what values it has from its conception of the heartland. (Taggart 2004, p. 274) Furthermore, and in contrast to the heuristically unwieldy concept of ‘the people’, ‘heartland’ is proposed as subjective to particular groups of people in a particular national/regional context and at any given moment in time. ‘Populists mobilize’, Taggart claimed, ‘when their heartland is threatened, not when a heartland is threatened’ (Taggart 2004, p. 275; emphasis in the original). This kind of context-specific nostalgia explains to an extent why, in spite of important ideological similarities and rallying against common opponents, the forces of the radical right have remained divided on the international level over the past years. While, however, the reaction may be related to, and influenced by, particular spatiotemporal contexts, Islamophobia has emerged as both a common denominator and an element of transnational political convergence for forces of the radical right. Not unlike anti-Semitism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there is something about the image of ‘the Muslim’ that transcends the space and time of the Muslim communities themselves, invoking imageries of an ‘external-internal’ threat and referencing a putatively inter- and trans-national challenge (Renton and Gidley 2017, pp. 1–21). In fact, intensifying shared hostility to Islam has provided the most successful platforms for joint initiatives from radical right parties in recent years (Hafez 2014). The 2008 Anti-Islamisation Conference organised by the Pro-Cologne movement with the expected participation of Filip Dewinter, founding member and former leader of the Flemish Block and former minister from the Lega Nord Mario Borghezio was called off at the last minute due to protests (Taras 2012, pp. 166–7). Two years later, Jerusalem became the unlikely scene of the most prominent transnational initiative by radical right parties. Heinz-Christian Strache from the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), Rene Stadtkewitz from the German Freedom Party, Kent Ekeroth from the Swedish Democrats, and Dewinter, declared their joint support for the state of Israel against what they described as an existential fight against Islamic terror (Häusler 2012, p. 180). After years of failed attempts, in the summer of 2015 Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front (FN) and Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom (PVV) finally overcame their declared differences to form – together with MEPs from the FPÖ, the Lega Nord, the Flemish Interest (VB), and other radical right parties – a grouping of radical right parties in the European Parliament (Europe of Nations and Freedoms). Their shared political platform was the fight against globalisation, mass immigration in Europe, and predictably the ‘Islamisation’ of the continent – the latter seen as both an existential and a cultural threat, a matter of security and of defence of both traditional and modern ‘Western’ values (Mudde 2016, pp. 39–42). The cross-over from the national context to the inter- and trans-national platform has been chillingly performed at various points in the last years. The success of the original demonstrations organised by PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans against Islamisation of the West) in cities around Germany prompted a franchise operation that saw the emergence of smaller groups in 365

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a number of European countries whose name fused the PEGIDA brand with national markers (Pietryka 2016; Druxes and Simpson 2016; Berntzen and Weisskircher 2016). In January 2016, a gathering from representatives of these groups, along established parties of the radical right such as Lega Nord and the Czech Dawn-National Coalition, signed the Prague Declaration – a document with a pervasive anti-Islam/Muslim message. In September 2017, Dresden witnessed a rally organised by PEGIDA and the Alternative for Germany (AfD), calling on the protesters to ‘get your country back’ from immigrants and Islam (Reuters 2017). In the following November, a mass rally of hyper-nationalist forces from across Europe was organised to coincide with the anniversary of Polish independence. The rally attracted more than 60,000 supporters who, in spite of particular national grievances and divergent ideological platforms, marched together in joint opposition to the perceived cultural decay of Europe and opposition to Muslim immigration. ‘Fortress Europe’ was a common theme in many of these and other similar rallies held in the last years – a platform that inter-nationalised both the perceived threat (immigration, Islam) and the pursued remedy (reinstatement of hard borders; expulsion of refugees; stricter ‘integration’ stipulations for Muslim immigrant communities).

Islamophobia and the alternative utopia of the radical right Thus, while a ‘heartland’ may remain context-specific and different from group to group and from country to country, the diagnosis of the problem (immigration from Muslim countries and the threat or perceived reality of the ‘Islamisation’ of Europe) has become standard across the forces of the radical right. This is no longer just about reclaiming a lost paradise of mono-culturalism and national sovereignty against the twin evils of globalisation and European supranationalism. It is primarily about an alternative vision of radical change that is firmly located in the utopian realm and with a trans-national horizon. Here I use the term ‘utopia’ in a neutral, subjective, indeed realist sense, denoting not a state of abstract perfection for all but a strategy of realising an alternative set of communal bonds pitted against a present (anti-utopian) state of perceived decadence (Claeys 2011, p. 12). This kind of utopia is wedded to the idea that a radically alternative vision of life is not just preferable but urgently needed and immediately actionable. Nostalgia for a past state of harmony can be part of this utopian vision, in the sense that it is re-imagined from its alleged past realisations. But the vision itself is novel and future-oriented precisely because it is rooted unambiguously in the present - the present that has brought about the anti-utopian status quo of internationalism and multiculturalism so emphatically rejected by the radical right (cf. Mannheim 2013). Of course there can be no meaningful utopia without the conviction of those pursuing it that their prescription is the optimal remedy for the perceived ills of the current state of affairs. The ideologues of the radical right have arrived at the demonisation of Islam and ‘the Muslim’ through a meandering route that has identified the postwar loss of sovereignty by the institution of the nation-state and its dominant ethnic community as the root of their anti-utopian critique (Spiegeleire, Skinner and Sweijs 2017; Kallis 2018a). The period after 1945 gave the gasping liberalism of the interwar years a surprising new lease of life, an unlikely third chance after the setbacks of the two world wars. In spite of the division of the world into two ideologically opposed camps, the liberal project flourished in ‘the West’ and sought to become a universalisable paradigm of political, socio-economic, and institutional change on a global scale (Fawcett 2018, pp. 283–386). Economic globalisation and trade, it was argued, would foster ever-closer international ties across the world, thereby minimising the risk of future conflict. Meanwhile, the political manifesto of postwar liberalism, steeped in memories of the two world wars and the brutal extermination of millions of Jews and other minorities, rejected nation-statism in favour of more deliberate diffuse models of political power, more inclusive notions of citizenship, and a 366

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far stronger role given to inter- and trans-national institutions in an attempt to counterpoise the power of the old Westphalian state. In many ways, this is what the Entente planners of Versailles world order had expected to happen – diffusing the power of grand empires into significantly smaller and imperfect nation-states, and then underwriting the risks through a series of interand trans-national checks and balances. That the post-First World War order failed so devastatingly to operate in this manner and that the liberal order came so close to being obliterated by the models of concentrated state power that it had attempted to neutralise served a powerful lesson to post-1945 liberal planners (Kallis 2018a). What can be described as the postwar liberal globalist/post-sovereigntist utopia emerged in a piecemeal way over subsequent decades. Supra-national and trans-national innovations, together with advances in human rights legislation on both national and international levels, created a momentum of change that cumulatively transformed the conventional paradigm of nation-statism in a post-national direction. This change also had seismic implications for how community, identity, border, and movement were articulated (Bustillo and Mares 2016, p. 116). But it was the political and institutional parabola of what is known today as the European Union that has ventured further and more ambitiously than any other single postwar institution from conventional understandings of national sovereignty. It is thus not a coincidence that the radical right in Europe has identified the EU as the most symbolic representation and one of the primary drivers of what it stands against (FitzGibbon, Leruth and Starting 2016). The combination of political expansion, socio-economic integration, institutional deepening, and removal of boundaries in key areas from trade to currency exchanges to citizen migration challenged many of the assumptions about the ineliminable core of nationstate sovereignty and the existence of a bounded political community at its very heart (Laffan, O’Donnell and Smith 2013, pp. 15–17). The combination of growing migration flows, freedom of movement within the Schengen zone of the EU, and the resulting gradual loss of border control by the sovereign nation-state increased both the numbers and the (subjective) visibility of non-European populations in the EU member states. By the 1990s, the parties of the radical right seized the growing anxiety caused by these changes and successfully nurtured the perception that the continent ‘was being ‘invaded’ by alien traditions, culture, and religion’ (Betz 1993, p. 416). It was during this period that the European radical right underwent a process of ideological and discursive transformation that resulted in a seismic ‘anti-Muslim reorientation’ (Zúquete 2008, p. 325). Long before 9/11, rising stars of the radical right such as Filip Dewinter, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and Pim Fortuyn (founder of the Pie Fortuyn List in The Netherlands), used the ideological trope of ‘ethnopluralism’ as an antidote to discredited racism in order to attack Islam as allegedly alien, unassimilable, and existentially dangerous to ‘European’ liberal culture (Taras 2012, pp. 193–195). In 2005, Dewinter rejected the accusation that the radical right is either racist or xenophobic but had no problem declaring ‘Islamophobia’ as a legitimate ideological feature of the Flemish nationalist movement. Four years later, Dewinter again described Islamophobia as ‘a duty’ for European citizens, calling ‘moderate’ Islam ‘a multicultural illusion’. The 9/11 attacks were quickly seized by the radical right as the alleged confirmation of a dire prophesy and a jolt to urgently needed action (Sheridan 2006; Bonney 2008). Immediately, populist politicians like Jörg Haider (then leader of the Freedom Party of Austria FPÖ) and Le Pen argued that the terrorist attacks were a spectacular and brutal performance of the very essence of the ‘clash of civilisations’ that Samuel Huntington had written about back in 1993 and the likes of Guillaume Faye, a pioneer of the Nouvelle Droite, had adapted for the nativist, ethno-pluralist discourse of the radical right (Wodak 2015, pp. 40–44). Unsurprisingly then, post-9/11 the radical right has made a lavish political investment in Islamophobia, transforming 367

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it into an extreme obsessional prejudice par excellence at the heart of its discourses and political programmes. This Islamophobia has become the overarching idée fixe that fuses the sedimented layers of long-term prejudice towards Islam and nativist hostility to the Muslim immigrant with acute contemporary insecurities about the status, identity or even future existence of the traditional nation-state (Bauman 2011; Mammone, Godin and Jenkins 2013, p. 5). It was the radical right’s most charismatic leaders and their controversial party programmes that broke the taboo of scapegoating Islam and communities with Muslim background in Europe, fanning the flames of Islamophobia and gradually establishing it as a form of widely ‘accepted racism’ in many contemporary Western societies (Hafez 2014, p. 2). From the wider pressure for immigration restrictions (assertion of strict border controls, bans on particular categories of immigrants or even calls for mass deportation) to more blatantly anti-Muslim campaigns targeting mosques and traditional Islamic customs, the radical right has broken one taboo after the other, set ever more radical precedents. It has also forced ‘mainstream’ political forces to at least take note and, sometimes, to even concede ground to them (Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart 2007; Kallis 2013). Amid an atmosphere of growing and protracted moral panic, parties of the radical right have led the chorus of hostility to Islam as the unifying theme that drew together fears of ‘invasion’, ‘oppression’ and ‘colonisation’ by immigrant Muslims, on the one hand, and an imagery of an all-out global civilisational Armageddon that cast into doubt the very survival of the West, on the other (Morgan and Poynting 2016). In addition, Islamophobia became an integral part of the radical right’s anti-elite/-establishment discourse, directed at both the national and supranational (e.g. the European Union) political classes (Fennema 2005). The diagnoses (of alleged civilisational incompatibility and ‘zero-sum’ competition for finite resources) and negative prognoses – erosion of ‘European’ values/Islamification, and heightened insecurity – found increasingly receptive audiences well beyond the traditional electoral constituencies of the radical right. Thus, post-9/11, the radical right re-invented and re-tooled Islamophobia as the most potent exclusionary ideology for re-defining the notions of ‘us’ in opposition to ‘them’, mixing race with culture and prejudice with rational arguments about integration, compatibility, and absorption capacity (Gingrich 2005; Bunzl 2005). In intellectual terms, little original or new was added to the Islamophobic ferment post-9/11; instead, what makes 9/11 such a critical watershed in the parabola of Islamophobia was the radical right’s subsequent framing of existential hostility to Islam as the single most important strategy for reversing the current state of affairs and unlocking an alternative future for ‘the people’ and ‘Europe’. Anything from immigration and terrorism to unemployment and multiculturalism have been exploited by the radical right in order to reinforce a key security message – either Islam is defeated and stamped out from host societies or ‘Europe’ and ‘the West’ will perish (Huysmans 2006, pp. 65–67).

Islamophobia as radical subtractive utopia It is this stark proposition of removing Islam and ‘the Muslim’ from ‘Europe’ that links Islamophobia to the contemporary radical right’s radical utopian project. The anti-Muslim ideological and discursive re-orientation of the radical right has now reached an advanced stage of normalisation so that the image of ‘the Muslim’, individually and collectively, epitomises most or all perceived fundamental pathologies of the current dystopian status quo: non-native in ‘Europe’ and understood in terms of a radical alterity; allegedly hostile to ‘the West’ and potentially aggressive to members of Western society; culturally, religiously and/or socially alien in liberal societies; freely wandering yet putatively unassimilable; economically parasitical in the context of a rigid ‘zero-sum’ competition for resources; politically suspect due to their alleged involvement in a quasi-demonological conspiracy against the traditional nation-state and ‘Europe’ (Kallis 2018b; O’Donnell 2018). 368

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Thus Islamophobia becomes the symbolic vertex of the anti-utopian status quo that the radical right has vowed to destroy as a precondition for embarking on its own utopian pursuit of a re-territorialised nation-state and a ‘pure’, revitalised national community. This utopia is profoundly hierarchical and non-egalitarian, positing the urgent necessity of radical redemption in order to transform itself into an egalitarian future state of harmony and abundance reserved only for the members of the native community (cf. Claeys 2011, p. 13). The fulcrum of this transition for the radical right is the subtraction of ‘the Muslim’ from European societies, as both physical presence and cultural/religious root or influence. Subtraction may take a number of forms – from cultural assimilation and enforced invisibility to quite literally removal and a ‘fortress’ scenario that bans future immigration, and any combination thereof. But this very subtraction also unlocks an alternative future of abundance and egalitarianism for the ‘redeemed’ native community. In this respect, the demonisation of ‘the Muslim’ and the normalisation of Islamophobia have been subsumed into the alternative utopian project of the contemporary radical right to the point that they have become its untroubling, respectable milestones (Fekete and Sivanandan 2009; Wolfreys 2018, pp. 45–84; Warsi 2017). At first sight, the proposition of subtracting ‘the Muslim’ from European societies rings more pragmatic and corrective than redemptive (cf. Canovan 2002) and utopian. For example, the ‘Manifesto for Germany’ that the AfD approved in 2016 and used as ideological programme for its campaign in the 2017 federal elections made clear that the ‘utopian’ orientation of globalisation, supranationalism (meaning primarily the EU), and multiculturalism have ‘always brought great suffering to mankind’ and therefore needs to be abandoned in favour of the retrotopia of ‘freedom of the European nations devoid of foreign paternalism’ (AfD 2016). Still, talking of discredited and dangerous ‘old [liberal] utopias’ that had to be abandoned and reversed provided the stepping stone for imagining an alternative future: ‘uphold human dignity . . . retain our western Christian culture, and maintain our language and traditions in a peaceful, democratic, and sovereign nation state for the German people’ (ibid., pp. 16 and 3 respectively; emphasis added). In The Netherlands, the political manifesto of Wilders’s PVV for the 2017 elections headlined the sovereigntist claim to make ‘Netherlands ours again’ but prioritised the goal of ‘de-islamizing’ the country through a combination of immigration ban, arrest and expulsion of ‘radical Islamists’, the removal of Islamic symbols from the public sphere, and the prohibition of mosques and the Qur’an (PVV 2016). Matteo Salvini, the leader of the Italian Lega, has repeatedly spoken of a Europe-wide all-out ‘culture war’ pitting the alleged values of the continent against Islam, which he considers an aggressive ‘invading’ force ‘entirely incompatible with European values’ (King 2017). Meanwhile, during the 2018 Hungarian elections, Fidesz posited a stark dilemma to the voters: an ‘immigrant country’ with the associated loss of national cultural values versus the victory of a ‘national government’ and the defence of full Hungarian sovereignty against ‘invading’ Muslims (Walker 2018). The message was predicated on a wholesale rejection of the European and global status quo of supranationalism and its associated institutions – predictably the EU but in the Hungarian case also ‘the people of George Soros’ as a synecdoche for an alleged world conspiracy of globalists against the power of the nation-state (Witte 2018). With public opinion support for an outright ban on immigration from Muslim-majority countries hovering above 50% in recent Europe-wide years (Osborne 2017), this kind of radical subtractive utopia has steadily moved from the fringes of the political spectrum much closer to the heart of mainstream politics and society. It has become an effective mobilising platform for political parties across the continent, capable of generating both rational and emotional support. In this respect, it has also accepted one of the fundamental propositions of utopian thought – namely that a radical alternative future is possible only through the active dismantling of the 369

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existing institutions and norms of liberal internationalism that stand in its way and prevent it from materialising (Douglas 2018, pp. 146–147). The performance of this subtractive utopia is not just confined to the discursive domain, employed as a negotiating threat and mobilising cry for electoral gains. For more than a decade, it has been slowly but steadily creeping into the domain of official state policy and local vigilantism. There is now a distinct lineage of symbolic bans targeting communities with Muslim background – from the 2009 referendum decision to ban minarets in Switzerland (Langer 2010) to more recent prohibitions of the call to prayer in parts of Germany (DW 2018), of street prayers in France (Agerholm 2017), and of the forceful closure of mosques in Austria (BBC News 2018); and from the landmark ban on the headscarf in France to a series of bans involving the Muslim female dress in France, Belgium (Sanghani 2016), and more recently Denmark (Kallis 2013; Guardian 2018). Meanwhile, anti-immigrant vigilantism has reared its ugly head on the border zone of countries such as Greece, Bulgaria and Hungary (DW 2016). And if the creep of Islamophobia into state practice has so far been relatively slow, inconsistent, and lagging well behind discourses of moral panic, this has not stopped local performances of the anti-Muslim subtractive utopia. In 2017, the southern Hungarian border town of Asotthalom, with a population of approximately 4,000 and only a handful of Muslim inhabitants, took the arbitrary decision to declare war on Muslims (and incidentally gay people as well) by prohibiting the settlement of people from Muslim-majority countries and by vowing to remove all Islamic symbols from the town. The mayor of the town had already achieved notoriety back in 2015 when he launched a video message titled ‘Message to illegal immigrants from Hungary’, with which he warned Muslim refugees that they would be immediately arrested and imprisoned upon entering the town (Bulman 2017). In Sesto San Giovanni, nowadays a suburb of Milan, the new mayor decided to take unilateral action by expelling hundreds of undocumented migrants, evicting them from council housing in favour of local Italians citizens, and blocking the already approved construction of a mosque (Povoledo 2018). The local initiatives to ban the so-called ‘burkini’ from the beach in Nice and elsewhere southern France during the summer of 2016 (Almeida 2018) may have been eventually lifted following rulings by national courts – a fate that also awaited the Asotthalom ban in Hungary; but their taboo-breaking intent has already been fulfilled by the temporary performance, adding to various other forms of national and transnational Islamophobic momentum.

Conclusion Such, in the end, is the pervasive power of the Islamophobic imaginary in contemporary Europe that the pugnacious rhetoric of Muslim subtraction has been operationalised as both precondition for, and primary constitutive element of, the radical right’s alternative utopia. While still an important aspect of the etiology of Islamophobia, the nostalgic longing for an imaginary ‘heartland’ or ‘retrotopia’ is no longer capable of sufficiently accounting for the growing mainstream popularity and creeping normalisation of the Islamophobic discourse evinced by the forces of the contemporary radical right. Instead, I have argued that this Islamophobic impulse is situated at the dialectical intersection between an idealised (national) past and the pursuit of an alternative future identitarian utopia. What now binds these two attributes together is the radical premise of removing Islam and ‘the Muslim’ from the social and cultural sphere. The redemptive sovereigntist utopia of the radical right has reached the point of being so intrinsically linked to the notion of Muslim and, more broadly, immigrant ‘contestant enmity’ (Cohen 2006, pp. 92–93) that aggressive subtraction and boundary-redrawing have been retooled as cherished utopian milestones themselves. 370

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30 Terrorism, hate speech and ‘cumulative extremism’ on Facebook A case study Mark Littler and Kathy Kondor

Introduction The growth of online communication over the last two decades represents arguably the biggest shift in human interactions since the introduction of the printing press (Delamothe 1995). The ‘digital revolution’ has created unprecedented opportunities for collaboration, cooperation, and commerce, opening new markets and allowing groups and organisations to flourish in a way that was impossible in the geographically and socially bounded spaces found offline (Wellman et al. 2003). The many and varied pro-social benefits of these changes have been subject to sustained research interest over the last two decades, with a substantial body of scholarship affirming the internet’s role in delivering benefits as varied as increased political participation (Ferdinand 2013) and social activism (Earl and Kimport 2011), expedited international trade (Keeney 1999), and quicker communications (Mann and Stewart 2000). While the ability to join individuals in defiance of social and physical geography has certainly created new opportunities – many of which have been beneficial – it is important to remember that communication technologies are, as Perros and Antoniou (2016) note, ethically neutral, with their moral value reliant on the intent of the user. In the era of cyberwarfare and ‘fake news’ (Amarasingam 2011) such insights barely need reiterating, and against this backdrop, the growing academic focus on negative and anti-social applications of digital technologies including for financial crime (Philippsohn 2001), copyright fraud (Baker 1999) and the distribution of prohibited content (Beech et al. 2008) is to be welcomed as a counterbalance to the ‘techno-utopianism’ (Christensen 2011) of early internet scholarship. However, the extent to which research has moved beyond narrow considerations of content to explore questions of behavioural causation, distribution and marketing remains limited. In the context of hate crime and Islamophobia, while a significant volume of scholarship has sought to map and typologise hate-speech on social media (Awan 2016; Littler and Feldman 2015; Awan and Zempi 2017), the research evidence remains largely silent in respect of usage strategies, marketing, and the impact of content on behavioural change. Indeed, little academic attention has sought to explore the complex causal pathways that lead to violence, and in which 374

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the internet plays a key role, and as a result, lazy assumptions as to the nature of its function in shaping the commission of hate crime persist in academic and policy discussion. Debates around the concept of ‘cumulative extremism’ (Eatwell 2006) offers an exemplar of this phenomenon, with academic and policy discussions embracing the idea as a way of explaining much of the recent Islamophobic violence that has occurred across the west. However, as Busher and Macklin (2015) note, the bounds of the phenomenon remain somewhat vague, and there is little empirical evidence that illuminates the behavioural processes underlying its operation. Particularly in respect of the internet, and the role of social media in mediating and moderating cumulative extremism, the research evidence remains largely silent. This chapter represents a first attempt to address this deficiency, providing the results of a study exploring the use of Facebook – as perhaps the most significant and widely employed social media conduit – by far-right groups in the promotion of Islamophobic hate crime in the aftermath of the 2015 Bataclan spree shootings.

Understanding ‘cumulative extremism’ As Busher and Macklin (2015) note, the concept of cumulative extremism has been adopted by many academic and policy commentators as a way of explaining increasing rates of Islamophobic violence. Initially coined by Eatwell to explain ‘the way in which one form of extremism can feed off and magnify other forms [of extremism]’ (Eatwell 2006, p. 205), the term has increasingly become synonymous with a narrower meaning in British debate (Bartlett and Birdwell 2013), frequently operating as a synonym for the ‘spirals of violence’ that are argued to characterise interactions between extreme Islamist and extreme right-wing groups (Busher and Macklin 2015). Under this understanding, an act of violence by one group – for example, a terrorist attack or a violent street demonstration – is seen to trigger a revenge attack by an opposing faction claiming to represent the interests of the broader community against which the first attack was directed. This revenge attack in turn targets a broader community that the original attacking group claims to represent, leading to a further revenge attack in an ‘enduring cycle of violent [and] terrorist action’ (Goodwin 2013). As Bartlett and Birdwell (2013, p. 4) note, there is a ‘strong intuitive case’ for this argument, and indeed, there is some – albeit limited – corroboratory evidence in both official statistics showing a rise in anti-Muslim hate crime following some acts of Islamist terrorism (O’Neill 2017) and in academic research looking at the reporting of anti-Muslim hate crime (Littler and Feldman 2015; Feldman and Littler 2014; Copsey, Dack, Littler and Feldman 2013). However, despite this there remain, as Busher and Macklin (2015) note, a number of important limitations including in respect of the empirical evidence base. Few studies have attempted to explore the mechanisms of influence that shape the relationship, especially in respect of the function of action by the media, state, and general public. The role of social media in particular is an important gap in the extant scholarship, with Fielitz et al (2018) noting both its intuitive centrality to ‘spirals of polarization’ and the lack of empirical evidence exploring its operation. As Walters, Brown and Wiedlitzka (2016) concede, the absence of this empirical evidence – particularly in respect of causation – is a significant deficiency of work in this area. This echoes Bartlett and Birdwell’s (2013) early observation that standard accounts of cumulative extremism have been silent on questions of causation, and while scholars such as Hall (2013), Chakraborti and Garland (2015), and Roberts et al. (2013) have done much to advance theoretical understandings of the Islamophobic hate, in an increasingly digital age research unpacking the role of online materials in influencing such behaviours is clearly important to developing more robust and effective policy responses. 375

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Marketing extremism: the role of social media Despite contemporary concern around Islamophobia and hate crime, Huysmans and Buonfino (2008) note that mainstream British politicians have historically been reluctant to engage in debates around the issues that are key to the appeal of far-right political actors: migration, terrorism, and threats to national identity. Moreover, the mainstream media’s reluctance to provide coverage to extremist viewpoints has historically been seen to have placed a cordon sanitaire around non-mainstream views (Littler and Feldman 2017), depriving extreme voices of a media platform from which to recruit. Writing in 2010, Ellinas notes that this failure to connect with the media has, to some extent, stifled the development of extreme movements, perhaps contributing to the hostility of supporters towards the mainstream media (Bartlett et al. 2011). However, with the rapid growth of technology, savvy actors have been able to subvert these restrictions and build communities of support via the internet (Berlet et al. 2015). In an increasingly digital age, such actors can come to occupy privileged positions as ‘unofficial custodians’ of extremist discourse (Lee 2015), curating media content to reinforce a world view among members which is supportive of the groups stated aims, and which increasingly comes to shape mainstream media coverage. Writing in 2006, Conway noted that digital communications were employed by extreme groups in pursuit of five core goals – information provision, recruitment, financing, networking, and information gathering. While successful organisations are likely to make use of a varied range of digital communication channels in pursuit of these objectives, their selection of medium is likely (at least in part) to be determined by the intended goal of the content they wish to share. Widely accessible and public facing sites – such as Facebook and Twitter – are likely to be employed to share content with different goals to private forums or the anonymised sites on the so-called ‘Dark Web’ (Jardine 2018). The intended audience is also likely to play a central role in the selection of medium, with potential, new, or less involved members and supporters likely to be engaged via more easily accessible and visible public forums. Fry (2016) highlights that the far right often exploit real or imagined acts of Islamist violence as a tool to recruit and incentivise violent action, consistent with the first two of Conway’s (2006) five goals. Given the need for this information to be publicly available, and evidence on the role of online far-right communities in sharing news content (Littler and Feldman 2017), the hostility of their members to the mainstream media (Bartlett et al. 2011), and the alleged centrality of far-right groups in the commission of hate crime (Copsey et al. 2013), it would seem reasonable to assert that the media activity of far-right groups on Facebook should, if these arguments are accepted, show appropriate ‘framing’ of news coverage following acts of Islamist violence. Indeed, Littler and Feldman (2015, p. 17) expressly note that such a process would seem a ‘vital pre-requisite for cumulative extremism’, suggesting that acts of Islamist violence should be followed both by Islamophobic hate speech and direct calls to action, pursuant to the ideological goals and modus operandi of the group. In this, the existing research would argue for a view of group content dissemination consistent with the assumptions two-step flow (Katz 1957) models of media influence, as a result of which we hypothesise that acts of Islamist violence will be followed by an increase in both curated coverage of the attacks, and calls to action by official Facebook channels of far-right groups.

Method Our analysis employed data drawn from the official Facebook outputs of two prominent UK-based far-right groups – Britain First and the English Defence League (or EDL) – collected 376

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in the aftermath of the 2015 Bataclan attacks. Content posted by the groups to their official Facebook pages during the five days immediately prior and following the Bataclan attacks was collected and thematically coded by a research assistant starting on the evening of the attacks. Collection continued for 5 days, with all posts screenshotted and saved for analysis. On completion of the data collection, all posts were coded using themes identified on the basis of an initial review of the data, allowing for a reflexive coding process akin to that employed by Strauss and Corbin (1998). The final coding structure included eight distinct themes (Islamophobia, immigration, terrorism, news, calls to action, merchandising, solidarity, and other), with a maximum of three codes applied to any one post. All coding was undertaken by a research assistant, and reviewed and verified by the lead author prior to analysis. Non-public content was excluded from the data, as was content posted by unofficial or individual accounts in order to allow for a tight focus on official group messaging. Similarly, comments on posts were also excluded, despite their potential importance in understanding the framing of posts, as an ethical measure intended to preserve the privacy of individual users. This is consistent with current UK Government Social Media Research Group guidance (2016). The final data set encompassed 388 discrete posts, of which 258 were published by Britain First, and 130 by the English Defence League (EDL). Of these, 156 were posted before the attacks (46 for the EDL, 111 for Britain First), and 231 after the attacks (147 for Britain First, 84 for the EDL). Analysis involved a direct pre and post-event comparison of post-frequency, with qualitative analysis of post content used to support interpretation of post meanings.

Results A comparison of the frequency of six of the themes in pre- and post-attack content is presented in Table 30.1. Despite the direction of the hypothesis, and in contrast to expectations grounded in the extant literature, our data offer little support for theories of cumulative extremism that would afford official group Facebook posts a significant influence on the commission of hate crime and violence. Despite work by Copsey et al. (2013) asserting the centrality of groups in inspiring members to engage in violence, our data evidenced no significant change in the number of calls to action following the Bataclan attacks, with the EDL publishing only three posts in this category, and Britain First issuing fewer calls following the attacks than in the five days immediately preceding them. Moreover, the content of these posts was often framed using ambiguous language – for example, with Britain First inviting members to ‘Take the fight to [their] enemies’ – that avoided giving direct prescriptions for action. This was in direct contrast to the overt calls anticipated by the research hypothesis. Differences were most evident between the pre and post-attack data in the publication of news led content. Results for both the EDL and Britain First showed a major increase in the distribution of news posts, with an increase of 48 and 53 stories evident for each group respectively. This is consistent with research explanations of media influence and cumulative extremism Table 30.1  Pre and post-attack comparison of post themes.

EDL (pre-attack) Britain First (pre-attack) EDL (post-attack) Britain First (post-attack)

Islamophobia

Immigration

Calls to action

Merchandising

News

Other

23 22 38 39

6 22 3 15

0 1 3 2

0 8 1 6

1 1 49 54

20 68 16 58

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that stress the function of formal groups as conduits for trusted news information. Given evidence on the significant levels of mainstream media distrust among members of far-right groups such as the EDL (Bartlett and Littler 2011; Bartlett et al. 2011), this is perhaps unsurprising. Interestingly, however, the framing of these stories was often Islamophobic, speculative, and guilty of scaremongering, though consistently bereft of express prescriptions for action save the common encouragement for members to ‘pray for Paris’. Data from posts coded for Islamophobia offered support for this picture, with few significant differences evident between the two groups in terms of their post focus. While there was some evidence of difference between the EDL and Britain first, both saw a significant increase in the total number of Islamophobic posts following the Bataclan attacks. This is consistent with the assumptions inherent in the existing literature, and in particular the idea that an act of Islamist violence may be followed by an Islamophobic ‘backlash’ (Maira 2011) that can – even bereft of express calls to action – lead to an uptick in hate crime and Islamophobic violence. There are a number of potential explanations capable of framing this result, which are discussed at length in the following section.

Discussion The results of this analysis raise a number of interesting questions in respect of the use of Facebook by far-right groups, perhaps the most obvious of which relates to the failure of the data to show a meaningful increase in calls to action following the 2015 Bataclan attacks. Despite the existence of evidence suggesting a significant increase in the reporting of antiMuslim hate crime in the aftermath of the Bataclan attacks (Tell MAMA 2016, p. 19), our data evidenced no significant change in the publication of calls to action on the part of either the EDL or Britain First. This suggests that, far from the official outputs of extreme groups serving an important function in mandating member action, the commission of online and offline acts of retribution against British Muslims may be largely unrelated to the content of group messages published online. While it remains possible that unobserved calls to action via private forums may be behind the increase in Islamophobic hate crime evidenced by the Tell MAMA data (Tell MAMA 2016), or that other groups may be behind its commission, the pre-eminence of the EDL and Britain First among UK far-right groups, and the significance of the increase in reported attacks (over 300%), implies that such explanations would lack prima facie credibility. A more convincing argument may suggest that the publication of calls to action may have been rendered less likely as a result of changes in the legal framework. While the crime of Encouragement of Terrorism under part 1 of the Terrorism Act (2006) has been in force for some time, a number of high-profile prosecutions in the immediate period before the Bataclan attacks saw individuals imprisoned for sharing content glorifying violence over social media (Elgot 2015; De Peyer 2015). The development of case law around the offence and its expansion to cover online communications may, alongside the deployment of harsh statutory penalties, be seen as having created an environment in which overt calls to violence are less likely to be made, a point lent credibility both by the speed and severity of prosecutions undertaken in the aftermath of the 2015 attacks, and by academic evidence on the centrality of such factors in determining encouragement of terrorism trial outcomes (Amirault and Bouchard 2017). While such an argument possesses obvious merits, the comparative lack of media coverage in respect of these trials, and the absence of direct prosecutions for far-right activists in the period prior to the Bataclan attacks suggests that the threat of punishment may not have directly influenced either Britain First or the EDL. A more plausible explanation may simply be that 378

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the data represent a significant challenge to common understandings of cumulative extremism, and in particular to accounts that seek to afford formal groups and pro-violent messaging a significant role in shaping member behaviours. As media effects scholarship has consistently shown, short-term exposure to pro-violent content is unlikely to result in a significant shift in behaviours among content consumers (Bushman and Huesmann 2006; Anderson et al. 2003). While the increase in the publication of Islamophobic content may, to some extent be seen as a counterbalance to this view, encouraging negative views of Muslims and creating a culture that facilitates the commission of violence and hate crime, there is little consensus in the literature as to how – if at all – such a relationship would operate in practice. Against this backdrop, the failure of our data to show a significant increase in calls to action – despite the rise in prevalence of anti-Muslim hate crime following the Bataclan attacks – would imply a picture which, while not capable of reliably disproving a link between group publications on Facebook and Islamophobic hate crime, is at least consistent with the findings of mainstream media effects research in Criminology. Despite this finding, our data highlights the important role organised groups play in disseminating news information. As Neiwert (2017) notes in respect of the US alt-right, far-right activists have exceptionally low levels of trust in the mainstream media, as a result of which they are less likely to believe the content of mainstream news. Indeed, research on opinion leadership and the so-called ‘two-step flow’ (Katz 1957) models has consistently identified the importance of opinion leadership, with work by Lee (2015) highlighting the way in which far-right groups engage in a process of curation and ‘cherry picking’ aimed at creating a media narrative consistent with their worldview. The rapid increase in the sharing of Islamophobic news content in the aftermath of the Bataclan attacks suggests that both the EDL and Britain First engage in this process, mirroring research on political marketing (Henneberg 2006) by suggesting an opportunistic use of events to promote a particular ideological outlook. Interestingly, in addition to an increase in the sharing of Islamophobic content, the Bataclan attacks were also followed by an increase in the publication of migrant-hostile content by both the EDL and Britain First. This is particularly significant given the initial failure of the press to identify the perpetrators as migrants, and suggests a willingness on the part of both the EDL and Britain First to engage in speculation in advance of the available facts. In an era of ‘fake news’, such a finding should come as no surprise, however its consistent with work on political marketing, and in particular with accounts that highlights the process by which political groups attempt to ‘spin’ events in service of their political objectives (McNair 2017). When considering such marketing and ‘spin’, it is important to note that our results also showed that the groups under investigation were largely not creating new content, but sharing a curated selection of content created by mainstream news outlets. As Ellinas (2010) rightly identifies, mainstream political actors have not been immune from engaging in Islamophobic messaging in recent decades, with both Alexander (2004) and Frost (2008) identifying that the mainstream media has encouraged and supported the growth of Islamophobia in the post-9/11 era. The extent to which these changes led or followed the collapse of the cordon sanitaire and the growth of the far-right and alternative media online remains to be seen, however the potential for far-right groups to share mainstream media content, negating the need to create outputs of their own, may have significant implications for scholarship in this area. In particular, by sharing publications from supposedly ‘hostile’ press outlets, far-right groups may potentially be able to lend credibility to their worldview by leveraging the prestige of mainstream media outlets, arguing that even their opponents accept the premise of their views. A review of media coverage after the Bataclan attacks lends tacit support to this view, with Draga Alexandru expressly identified mainstream coverage as fuelling prejudice contributing towards an ‘atmosphere of 379

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disapproval [towards] people originating from Muslim countries’ (2017, p. 131). In such a climate of hostility, it is unsurprising that violence may result. Given the prevalence of anti-Muslim media content in the mainstream press, it is also possible that any increase in anti-Muslim hate crime following the Bataclan attacks may not be a product of organised far-right group action, but of increasingly hostile mainstream media coverage on an increasingly receptive public. The implications of such an explanation would be significant given the extensiveness of scholarship that asserts the centrality of organised farright networks in the commission of Islamophobic hate crime (Copsey et al. 2013; Poynting 2006; Renton 2003). Rather than ideologically committed members of far-right groups being ‘activated’ by group publications, such a view would seem to suggest that much Islamophobic hate crime may be the result of action by unaligned – though perhaps sympathetic – members of the general public, whose knowledge of – and attitudes to – Islamist violence is shaped by the mainstream media. Such an argument would again align with the work of Busher and Macklin (2015), and their exhortation to place cumulative extremism in a broader social and political context. Rather than focussing on the formal movement-counter-movement dynamics envisaged by Eatwell’s (2006) initial proposal, our results would suggest the need to take a broader and more diffuse view of the social movements involved. Instead of formal membership organisations composed of ideologically committed activists, this outlook may be seen to argue the need for understanding cumulative extremism through1 the lens of opposing social groups broadly defined.

Policy implications On a policy level, our results argue the possibility for several key changes in the nature of state responses to the commission of Islamophobic hate crime and the regulation of extremist speech on social media. Firstly, our results may be taken to challenge the assumption common in policy circles that extremist organisations actively use social media to promote violent action. Despite academic evidence that suggests the involvement of organised far-right groups in orchestrating some Islamophobic revenge attacks (Copsey et al. 2013; Poynting 2006; Renton 2003), the data suggest that the factors contributing to the post-attack spike in reported hate crime may be attributed to other factors, including the mainstream media environment. Such a finding is not to delegitimise the – very reasonable – concerns that exist around the rhetoric and outputs of extreme-right organisations: certainly, these groups may play an important role in both fostering an environment of intolerance, and also in terms of facilitating radicalisation in certain cases. Indeed, anecdotal evidence affords both Britain First and the EDL a significant role in the radicalisation of both Thomas Mair and Darren Osborne. Rather, our results argue for a broader response aimed at fighting the climate of intolerance present in mainstream media narratives, rather than an exclusive focus on outputs of formal groups. In this, we are consistent with Allen in identifying the media as perhaps ‘one of the most prevalent, virulent and socially significant sources of Islamophobia’ (Allen 2001, p. 2), and Littler and Feldman (2015) in arguing for a more responsible approach to the reporting of terrorist attacks by the mainstream press. Avoiding lazy journalism that links Islam and terrorism as a ‘threat’ in news reportage (Jaspal and Cinnirella 2010; Baker et al. 2013) may be a good first step to addressing this issue. While such a shift could be incentivised by strengthening and placing on a statutory footing the relevant sections of the IPSO editors code of practice on Discrimination (specifically section ii provisions on the reporting of religion), change may also be advanced by refocussing media coverage to highlight the many pro-social stories involving Muslims. As experimental research 380

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by Saleem and Ramasubramanian (in press) highlights, exposure to positive media representations of Muslims decreases support for anti-Muslim measures, implying the possibility that increasing the number of positive representations may also reduce rates of Islamophobic hate crime. Responsible commissioning of news stories, as well as the promotion of positive Muslim characters in entertainment media, may go some way to addressing this. Moreover, by highlighting the importance of content curation, and the sharing of mainstream media sources by far-right groups, our results may also be taken to argue against the current focus on regulating content on social media. Significant volumes of political and media commentary have focused on the need to regulate social media and Facebook content as a way of reducing the risk of both hate-speech online, and extremist radicalisation. By highlighting that the majority of the content shared by the EDL and Britain First came from mainstream media sources, our research questions the efficacy of direct digital regulation approaches, instead arguing the need for policymakers to engage in either a broader process of press regulation and responsibilisation, a process of user education and content consumption discretion building, or both. By focussing on simply extreme and illegal content sharing, significant opportunities to respond to Islamophobia and radicalisation are likely to be missed. Less formally, research by Teitelbaum (2017) highlights the role that advocacy organisations can play in targeting the advertising revenues of media sources consistently publishing anti-Muslim content. In this, civil society organisations could move to support the work of the Stop Funding Hate campaign targeting advertisers working with commercial news sources that have a history of promoting anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic content, while also lobbying to apply social and political pressure to publishers. Anecdotal sources suggest such pressure can also be effectively applied by lobbying corporate shareholders in companies such as News Corp, the publisher of The Sun, and by applying social pressure to individuals associated with the owners of private publications regularly publishing anti-Muslim content (such as the The Daily Mail or The Daily Express – see Waterson 2018). Alongside this, civil society organisations may also wish to proactively employ targeted advertising to promote pro-Muslim news stories, both in general, and in particular in the aftermath of terror attacks. By doing so, they could counterbalance the negative content curation and publication work undertaken by far-right groups, employing the Facebook advertising tool to micro-target group followers as well as those at risk of joining far-right groups. Given the small overall number of EDL and Britain First supporters active on Facebook, and the low cost of publishing targeted content, such an approach may prove to be both financially and practically effective.

Conclusions While we feel it is important to be circumspect when interpreting and explaining the results of a single study, our results nevertheless raise a number of important points in respect of orthodox understandings of cumulative extremism, hate crime, and the role of Facebook in facilitating violence in the aftermath of acts of Islamist terrorism. By highlighting the absence of calls to action and the prevalence of both Islamophobic and anti-migrant content in the posts of both Britain First and the EDL, our findings challenge both widely held assumptions as to the nature of the cumulative extremism process, and the efficacy of interventions designed to target farright groups and their role in the commission of Islamophobic hate crime. We highlight the potential implications of these challenges for both existing scholarship and policy response to far-right groups online, and identify a range of potential alternative approaches that policy makers may wish to consider, in particular highlighting the importance 381

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of addressing mainstream media reportage and the absence of positive media representations of Islam and Muslims. We also highlight the role that can be played by civil society organisations, in particular identifying the potential for social and economic pressure to be exerted against mainstream media forums promoting islamophobia, and for micro-targeting to be employed on social media to reach and challenge those who are most at risk of engaging in Islamophobic hate crime. Future research may wish to focus on the role played by alternative social media forums including Twitter and YouTube, as well as new entrants such as Gab and established – but underexplored forums including 4chan and reddit. Attention may also wish to focus on Instagram given evidence on the increasing influence of image-led social media platforms (Alshawaf 2015). Moreover, more detailed analysis of the extent of user interaction with group posts, including comment analysis, and research on the role of Facebook content management algorithms in promoting content, may help to address some of the methodological limitations of this work. Alongside research employing larger samples, longer time-frames, and alternative groups, future researchers may also wish to employ experimental designs as a way of ascertaining the impact of social media posts on user views, employing randomisation to establish causal linkages and facilitating the development of a more in-depth understanding of the processes at play.

Note 1 A final, interesting, point can be made in respect of the fact that the data for both groups evidenced a significant increase in the number of merchandising posts following the Bataclan attacks. While not directly related to the hypothesis under investigation in this paper, such a finding is interesting as it supports Conway’s (2006) theory on the financial aspect of extremist groups online positioning. Moreover, the increased prevalence of merchandising calls suggests that group moderators and administrators are alive to the potential for capitalising on acts of Islamist violence, albeit in pursuit of more mundane and mercantile aims than incitement to violence.

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31 The police challenges in responding to Islamophobic hate crime Paul Giannasi

Introduction I joined the UK police as a constable in 1984 and retired as a mid-ranking officer in 2014. When reflecting on that 30-year period, I left a vastly different organisation from the one that I joined in my early 20s. This paradigm shift in culture is difficult to quantify, but is perhaps best described as a shift from a ‘police force’ to a ‘police service’. My initial training in the 1980s coincided with the National Miners’ Strike and was very much about exercising control, influenced by a view that public order was maintained by the strength of a disciplined, pseudomilitary organisation. The most significant catalyst for change was the public inquiry into the tragic murder of Stephen Lawrence, which was published in February 1999 and made recommendations that went on to fundamentally change this landscape for all criminal justice agencies but particularly the police. Most notably, it exposed racist hate crime to public and criminal justice scrutiny. The vast majority of current UK hate crime legislation and policy has its roots in this Inquiry. As an operational patrol officer and detective in the 1980s and 1990s, I had witnessed first hand the significant impact that racism and other types of hate crime had on victims, their families and wider communities. However, my first recollection of being involved in tackling widespread anti-Muslim hate crime was during the years 2000 and 2001, when there was a perceptible hardening of racist attitudes in response to certain local and international incidents. This brought a trend of deep-rooted hostility to my attention, and I observed more indicators of community tensions than I had seen at any time since the riots in 1985. In my experience at that time, there were three particular incidents that triggered this adverse reaction to our Muslim and ‘South Asian’ communities. They were events in (i) Istanbul and (ii) Oldham, and (iii) the 9/11 attacks in the US.

Istanbul In April 2000, a large number of Leeds football fans travelled to Istanbul to watch their team play a UEFA Cup match against Galatasaray. Ahead of the event, violence broke out between rival supporters and two Leeds fans were killed in knife attacks during the clashes. These deaths 385

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caused significant grief among the victims’ family and friends, but also sparked anger in the wider football community in the UK.

Oldham In April 2001, a 76-year-old man named Walter Chamberlain was walking through Chadderton, an area in Oldham in Greater Manchester, when he was approached by a group of young men of South Asian descent who demanded to know his address. Mr Chamberlain was assaulted and sustained significant facial injuries and his picture was given extensive media coverage. Although Mr Chamberlain stated that his attack was not racist in nature, it was widely reported in the media as being so. Some journalists claimed to have interviewed young ‘Asian’ men who described the area as ‘no-go’ for white people. This was denied by local authorities but, nonetheless, the reporting had caused considerable distress and anger. A week after the incident, Stoke City were due to play a league football match against Oldham. Ahead of the game, a large number of their supporters marched through Chadderton and performed a coordinated racist attack on locals and their property. Specifically, they claimed to target victims who they deemed to be ‘Pakistani’, in retaliation for the attack on Mr Chamberlain. Local and travelling racists continued these acts of provocation in the weeks that followed and these tensions eventually escalated into ethnically-fuelled rioting in the Glodwick area of Oldham. This then spread out into many towns and cities in the North of England.

9/11 In September 2001, the USA was subjected to a coordinated series of Al Qaeda terrorist attacks, including those on the Twin Towers in New York. During this time, the UK did not have comprehensive national hate crime data and the best indicative data available was the ‘Racist Incident Data’, published as part of the Home Office Statistics on Race and the Criminal Justice System (2003). This information was limited in that it included both crime and non-crime incidents and did not differentiate racial from religious cases. It did, however, show a marked rise in racist incidents in England and Wales, from 47,814 in 1999/2000, 53,092 in the next year and peaking at 54,370 in 2001/02 before dropping back by 11% the following year, to 48,525 (ibid., p. 17). At the time of the 9/11 attacks, I was a local police commander in an area with a diverse community. I also had experience of policing football clubs that had overtly racist supporters within their fan bases. While the offenders were a small minority, the decent majority either could or would not prevent it being a regular feature of match-days. My colleagues and I were keen to understand the backlashes that would be suffered by innocent Muslim and ‘South Asian’ residents in our area. Despite the lack of definitive national data, we did record racist and religious hate crimes locally, in response to the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. Using this data together with interviews with local community leaders, we attempted to measure the impact of these significant events on the lives of our local people. When comparing the community response after the three aforementioned events, I had expected 9/11 to have triggered the most dramatic rise in hate crime reported locally, since it had the most devastating impact on society in general. What we actually found was quite the opposite, as this had the least impact of the three events. The most notable spike in hate crime was instead attributable to the death of the Leeds football fans and it is further arguable that the organised and coordinated attack on Chadderton was the most damaging and sinister of all of 386

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the racist crimes. Thus we posed the question: why did the most significant event appear to have led to the least immediate retaliatory reaction against Muslim and South Asian residents? This was a difficult question to answer, as the lack of empirical national data meant that there was also a dearth of academic research. Also, since two of the events took place outside of the UK, they were not examined by inquiries, and the Report into the 2001 Riots by Professor Ted Cantle (Home Office 2001) concentrated on the broader societal causes of the breakdown of community cohesion, such as education, segregation and poverty. In order to better understand the impact of global events on our local community, we examined the circumstances of the recorded hate crimes, as well as the behaviour of perpetrators. It was the latter that I found to be more informative. What we gauged from this was that, while our policies were strongly ‘victim focused’ in the wake of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, we needed to view the situation from the perpetrators’ perspectives. We had to consider what had offended their sensibilities, rather than considering what offends the moral majority population who can be shocked, saddened or angered without resorting to a violent backlash against an innocent victim, who just so happens to have the same characteristic as someone who has offended them. One thing that stood out to me was that the type of people who commit hate crimes are likely to conflate characteristics and have a limited capacity to understand the nuances of diverse identities. We have seen many examples of this over the years, with Sikhs attacked in retribution for Islamist terrorism or anyone who looks to have South Asian or Middle Eastern heritage being seen as ‘Pakistani’ in the eyes of the racist. Another important conflation is often between ethnic and religious identities; graffiti outside Mosques tended to be racist in nature rather than anti-religious and, as I explore later, this renders hate crime data less definitive. At this time, we found that there was a strong link between football fan groups and racist crime and this was, perhaps, one of the reasons for the strong identification with the Leeds fans who were killed. For many months, local racist fans would regularly chant ‘I’d rather be a P∗∗i than a Turk’. This was not endearment to Pakistani people but showed the contempt that they held for the former incident. This was surprising, given that the local fans had an animus to rival Leeds fans, but we took it as a sign that they found it easier to identify with travelling English football fans than they did with business people working in Lower Manhattan. This principle of trying to understand what is likely to trigger retaliation has underpinned UK police efforts to reduce community tensions and there are many more contemporary examples to highlight this. One such comparison would be the responses to recent Islamist terrorist attacks, as with the horrific murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in 2013 and attack on the Palace of Westminster in 2017, which included the murder of PC Keith Palmer. I would suggest that most reasonable citizens would view these attacks with similar disgust; both were an attack on our democracy and resulted in the senseless murder of unarmed men who dedicated their lives to protecting us from harm (among others in the latter). Yet, despite the equal horror felt by most reasonable citizens, the adverse reaction was much more vociferous in 2013. Many of the racist minority would have a confrontational view of the police and would see Parliament as a seat of the ‘Westminster Elite’ rather than the democracy that underpins the country that they would hold so dear. In the aftermath of the murder of Lee Rigby, there was a number of major arson attacks on Islamic centres and mosques, including notable crimes in Muswell Hill and Grimsby, and a gathering of around 1,0001 far right protesters outside Downing Street in a protest organised by the anti-Islam group, English Defence League. While we observed a short term increase in recorded crime following the 2017 Westminster attack, the crimes were less notable in their veracity. Also, a similar far right march into central London attracted between 100 and 3002 individuals and a much larger anti-fascist counter-march. 387

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I would suggest that the above comparison and my observations over recent years would indicate that a person who has a propensity to commit racist violence is likely to have a greater affinity to our armed services than they would to a police officer or to the occupants of the Palace of Westminster. This is just one example of the myriad of factors that will influence the extent of adverse reactions to critical incidents. For me, this reinforces the need to understand the psyche of the potential perpetrators of hate crime, as it will not always be the same as those of us who contain our anger and recognise that we are not culpable for the actions of criminals from within our community, just because we happen to share a personal characteristic.

Islamophobia, racism or anti-Muslim hate I think that it is imperative that we distinguish the different terms used to describe animosity aimed towards Muslims. However, similarly to other types of hostility, such as antisemitism, it is unlikely that we will ever achieve a general consensus on such definitions. In my personal view, the term ‘islamophobia’ is unhelpful when seeking to establish policy and legislative approaches towards the problem. A phobia, as defined by the UK National Health Service, is ‘an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal’.3 Given this, the term ‘islamophobia’ effectively defends hate crime perpetrators by suggesting that their hostility can be excused by a medical condition. It also encompasses those who have no experience of Muslims but a genuine fear of the impact that the tenets of Islam may have on the community. Also, fundamentally, Islam, like any other theology, is not protected in UK and European laws. Therefore a more accurate term would perhaps be ‘anti-Muslim hate crime’ and ‘anti-Muslim sentiment’ to describe non-criminal discrimination. While states should rightly seek to eradicate discriminatory views through engagement and education, the criminal justice agencies would understandably concentrate on those who act out illegally because of their hostile views. There have been attempts in international government organisations to try to reach a consensus over the competing rights of, for example, free speech and religious freedom but they have not succeeded as different state ‘red-lines’ are often poles apart. International debates, such as the conferences surrounding the UN Resolution 16–18 on Combatting Religious Intolerance, created in 20114 often expose more questions than they provide consensus. This Resolution limits its considerations to the need to combat the discrimination of ‘persons based on religion or belief’ echoing the European and UK stance that this is a part of a ‘human rights’ framework underpinned by a duty to protect the citizen’s fundamental right to freely observe their religious beliefs or to argue against the tenets of any or all religions, so long as they do not unlawfully attack on the rights of another. Despite this, there are individuals, religious groups and even states that believe that such provisions should extend to laws to outlaw blasphemy, intended to protect the tenets of a religion from challenge, denial or ridicule. One example of this call was Article 22(c) of the Cairo Declaration of the Organisation of Islamic Conference5 in 1990, which said: Information is a vital necessity to society. It may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and ethical values or disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or weaken its faith. My strong belief is that it is right to separate out the rights of citizens from efforts to promote, teach or defend the tenets of any belief and, for this reason, the protection of fundamental human rights in a framework such as the European Convention on Human Rights is more relevant to the challenges we face in modern, diverse communities. There are occasions where 388

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anti-religious acts have been criminalised, but this would be because the act, such as the burning of a religious text, was done to cause harassment or threaten an individual, rather than defaming a religion. For these reasons, I believe the much more accurate term for us to adopt is ‘antiMuslim hate crime’. While the term ‘hate crime’ does not, itself, have universal support, most states have a definition that applies to all forms of monitored hate crime in their jurisdiction. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the definition is published in the College of Policing’s Hate Crime Operational Guidance and includes ‘Any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on a person’s religion or perceived religion’ (College of Policing 2014). This definition applies to all ‘monitored strands’ of victims and rejects any hierarchy, using a similar construct for all protected characteristics. I believe this is an important principle of policy, to hold our responses to scrutiny and maintain our core belief, that protection from hate crime is a human right that we all share and no one victim is less worthy than another. It is inevitable that affected communities will be more focussed on their own experiences and while a state should consider the individual elements of each crime type and will undoubtedly offer more resources to more prevalent crimes, the aspirational outcome should be universal. Having established a universal framework for hate crime in the UK, it is also important we consider the context of each manifestation of hate, to ensure that we not only react to criminal activity but seek to reduce the hostilities and tensions that motivate a perpetrator to act. This requires an understanding of the global and historical influences that affect relationships in any society and the promotion of an inclusive community that celebrates and respects diversity. As I mentioned above, my experience would suggest that perpetrators are likely to conflate ethnic and religious characteristics and many Muslims will perceive an attack on them to be racist rather than anti-religious. This is particularly true for Muslims in Europe, where the majority would also be an ethnic minority, doubly identifying them as ‘other’ in the minds of the perpetrator. This situation can be even more stark if the victim has other ‘minority characteristics’ such as being gay or disabled. There is a huge disparity in the recording of hate crime, even between states with similar legislative approaches to human rights. By way of comparison, according to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Italy recorded 803 hate crimes in 2016, whereas, with a smaller population6 size and similar demographic factors, England and Wales recorded 80,393. I should add that I do not believe that the United Kingdom is a more hostile location but it reflects the work done in the wake of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry to improve reporting systems and to build confidence in affected communities. Despite the relatively robust data collection systems in the United Kingdom, it does not provide a definitive picture of the nature and extent of the experiences of Muslims and those perceived to me Muslim. The data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows us that, despite the UK having relatively high recording levels, all hate crime is under-reported. The latest available data estimates that there were actually 222,000 hate crimes that took place. This underreporting is likely to be greater in more isolated communities or in certain circumstance, such as those who work in the night-time economy where they are exposed to customers affected by alcohol. One reason the data does not give a complete picture is the issue I raised earlier about the conflation of characteristics. The police record a crime based on the perception of the victim (or other person with knowledge of the crime) and this leads to a lot of reported hate crime against Muslims being recorded as racist. There are also many non-Muslims who are victims of anti-Muslim hate crime either due to mistaken identity or because they were supporting the rights of Muslims. Hate crime data in the UK has been gathered in its current form since 2008 but it does not routinely break the data down other than between the 5 different monitored strands. 389

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In October, 2015 the then UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced that religious hate crime data would be disaggregated and the first set of formal data is expected late in 2018. The police have, however published the results of retrospective analysis of this data for 2011 and 2015/16. The data for 2011 was heavily caveated but found that 35% of the 1,829 Religious hate crimes recorded that year were anti-Muslim. This extended to 52% of the crimes, which were distinguishable (the target group was not ascertained in 35% of the reports). In 2015/16 the police were able to identify the hostility in 88% of the 4,213 religious hate crime and anti-Muslim crimes accounted for 56%7 of the total (64% of those with a hostility recorded). When the above data is applied to the census data (as was done in the 2011 data) it would suggest that Muslims are significantly less likely to suffer hate crime than Jewish people; however, the report points out that comparisons could be misleading. There are a number of reasons for this including that many Muslims report crimes as racist and that ‘third-party’ reporting structures were significantly more robust and long-standing in the Jewish community. It also acknowledges that Jewish and Sikh people have been identified by UK courts as ethnic identities, and as such antisemitism would include some race hate crimes against Jews.

Policy responses In 2007, the UK government established a cross-government Hate Crime Programme. I was seconded in to manage the programme activity and I have held that post ever since. The programme was established following an examination of the progress made in response to the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. A review led by the Honourable Mr Justice Fulford, reported in 2006 and the then Attorney General established the programme to continue to oversee the progress since 1999 (see United Kingdom Attorney General’s Office 2006). It was not established to take control away from individual ministers or criminal justice executives, but rather to coordinate a joint working approach for maximum benefit and to deliver some of the changes needed to improve services to victims. It has survived several changes of government, through which it has maintained some key underpinning principles, including: • • • •

that solutions can only come from a cross-disciplinary strategy that brings all state actors together to find holistic solutions to targeted abuse; that victims should be at the heart of any policy and executives should consider their advice when making decisions and developing strategies; that we need to build collaborative relationships with key actors, such as academia and relevant industries (e.g. Internet providers); and that there can be no hierarchy of hate, with solutions originating from the adoption of a human rights-based strategy.

Successive governments and criminal justice executives have maintained a broadly consistent approach since 2007. Oversight of policy rests with a Hate Crime Strategy Board that includes representatives from all relevant government departments and agencies. Importantly, the programme is supported by a dedicated Independent Advisory Group and a similar Youth Group, which bring together victims, advocates and academics to support the above principles. In 2012, the government also introduced the Anti-Muslim Hatred Working Group to challenge, more broadly, the underlying negative sentiments towards Muslims. They address a number of issues, such as education, community cohesion and the advice given to media professionals. 390

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Prevalence of anti-Muslim hate crime and hostility In my opinion, despite the data restrictions outlined above, it is clear that anti-Islamic beliefs and anti-Muslim hostility are among the most entrenched in sections of our society. As mentioned above, I believe that it is vital to separate these two emotions, yet they are often interrelated. In other words, it is possible to have anti-Islamic views without being anti-Muslim, although the opposite is not common in my experience. There are, of course, citizens, including academics, who have a negative view of Islam, its validity and its impact on society, just as there are similar opponents to other or all religions. Such views are an integral part of a free society and many can debate this without ever presenting a threat to anyone. However, sadly there are also many who would act on those views in a hostile, violent and even murderous way. Such individuals will rarely target the person who caused their ire, but will instead take retribution against a random, innocent individual who merely shares a characteristic with the person at the root of that anger. All too often the victim of an anti-Muslim hate crime is chosen because of their perceived or actual weakness, with examinations of antiMuslim hate crime in the wake of terrorist attacks showing that women are more likely to be targeted. Indeed in 2016, the charity Tell MAMA noted that 56% of victims who came forward to report street-based incidents were female. This imbalance could have several contributing factors, such as victims’ willingness to report, however this is still a higher proportion than I have observed for other victim groups. This disparity may be more stark because one of the common criticisms of Islam and Muslims from elements of the far right is that both encourage misogynistic violence. The vast majority of Muslims, of course, reject such violence, but this narrative remains prevalent in offender groups and is fuelled by rare yet horrific acts of violence based on historic or warped cultural or theological beliefs. The fact that these perpetrators position themselves as some sort of moral defenders of women’s rights is as bizarre as it is disingenuous. Pulling the hijab from the head of a Muslim woman in the street to ‘liberate’ her from her ‘oppression’ is grotesque and the irony of attacking a woman to defend her rights would only be missed by a small-minded, bigoted individual. This ‘transferred culpability’ in the eyes of hate crime perpetrators has exacerbated the problem of anti-Muslim hostility in Europe and the UK. It is, however, fuelled by lazy, discriminatory or cynical narratives expressed in society more generally. It is true that the more vociferous antiMuslim sentiment is more likely to be found on social media than more traditional forms of mass information, but it is the traditional media that has greater influence on both perpetrators and societal views in general. Some examples of press coverage of Islam and Muslims are individually outrageous, peddling palpably untrue myths and information. However, perhaps even more damaging is the ‘drip-drip’ effect of lazy or malicious headlines, which, strangely, are often accompanied by a factually correct and balanced subtext. Examples of this can be seen in the reporting surrounding community support for terrorism, criminal acts committed by Muslims or even offenders who have heritage in countries associated with Islam. Our Independent Advisory Groups have been monitoring the coverage of certain groups susceptible to hate crime in the UK traditional media, including, but not restricted to, Muslims. They would express a view that the perceived or presumed religion of a perpetrator is far more likely to be mentioned if a headline relates to a Muslim perpetrator than would be true for other religions. They would go on to say that this is not replicated in positive news stories. For example, Sir Mohamed Farah is rarely described as a ‘Muslim athlete’ in headlines about his sporting successes and, despite his heritage, he is more likely to be referred to as ‘Britain’s most successful distance runner’ or as The Sun referred to him on 11 August 2017: ‘Brit athletics legend Sir Mo Farah’. 391

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I believe that this ‘drip-drip’ negativity in our everyday narrative creates an environment where hostility can ferment and, while the vast majority of citizens will resist this or not act out on such imbalanced information, it will have an inevitable motivational force on those with a propensity to discriminative actions. As well as increasing risk and fear in affected communities, it also creates frustration and anger towards society, which can make disaffected individuals even more susceptible to radicalisation. This frustration was best summed up for me in a conversation that I had with a tearful Muslim mother of three young children at a public event in the Midlands. She told me about the pressures she faced in everyday conversations that she had about Islamist terrorist attacks and said: How many times do I have to make a stand against the actions of a fascist terrorist? I hate what they do but people are waiting for me to tell them that in every single conversation on the subject. Did you have to do that when [Anders Breivik] murdered the young people in Norway or [David Copeland] set off the bombs in London? It perhaps goes without saying, but as a member of the majority European population group, I did not feel that pressure and would presume it would be taken for granted. This was a luxury that was not available to this distressed and dismayed Muslim mother.

The development of Tell MAMA Since the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, one of the key strands of the UK response to hate crime has been the vital role of civil society and charity groups in offering a service to victims and supporting those who are less likely to report crimes to the police. While their effectiveness has been inconsistent, the best examples are an invaluable part of the state response to hate crime. Some, such as Stop Hate UK and Kick it Out, offer services to all victims, albeit in the football environment in the case of the latter. Others, like GALOP (LGBT) and the Community Security Trust (CST) work to support victims from specific community groups. Perhaps the most effective of these groups has been the CST, which supports Jewish communities in the UK. It is a charity that does not accept state funding8 but is supported by charitable donations. Established in 1994, the CST has grown to become, in my view, the most robust and effective support group for victims of hate crime in the world. They have developed quality systems for data and victim support and have, most helpfully, a core commitment to help other communities achieve this same level of service. Not only is this commitment enshrined in its charitable documents but it is demonstrated in its everyday practice. Its common mantra is that it does not want for the Jewish community anything that it would not want for other hate crime victim groups. From 2010 to 2012, the programme agreed that the threat to Muslims in the UK was significant but that we also knew many victims were not coming forward to report crimes. There were many reasons for this, including that Muslim citizens were more likely to work in the ‘night-time economy’ than some other communities, where alcohol fuelled offending is more prevalent but reporting is less common. Some also reported a lack of confidence in the police and other state institutions. We believe that the absence of a national service, such as that provided by the CST, also contributed to the problem of underreporting. As we set out to facilitate the establishment of a similar service to the CST for the Muslim community, we knew that we were going to face additional challenges here. Not only is the UK Muslim community around 10 times larger than our Jewish community, but the group is also more geographically diverse

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and more likely to be from a visible ethnic minority. We also knew that the ‘theological hierarchy structure’, which exists in many religious communities, is not present in the Muslim community, with sectarian, cultural and heritage differences meaning that no individual or group is likely to be considered to represent the entire community. Having agreed to work with potential groups to replicate the work of the CST, the Strategy Board agreed certain principles that needed to be met before it would support Government funding, including: • •

• •

That the host group would need to offer a service to all Muslim victims of hate crime, regardless of the sectarian identity, heritage or if they were, for instance, a Muslim victim of LGBT hate crime or intra-religious sectarian hate crime. The group would need to sign up to the ideals contained in the ‘Race for Justice Declaration’, which required a support for universal human rights. While it accepted services may dedicate their efforts in support of one victim group, they must at least be prepared to condemn all forms of hate crime. They must be prepared to work with the police to encourage and support victims to report, either directly or through their third party services. The organisation must have robust and effective data systems and services that meet the standards expected by victims who access services through traditional victim support structures.

My colleagues and I met with a number of individuals and groups who felt that they were well positioned to provide this service. The majority of these either could not or would not sign up to this list of ideals and, as we did due diligence, we even found that some organisations had circulated or condoned hostility aimed at other groups, including sectarian Muslim subgroups, Jews, or lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) groups. In 2012, ministers agreed to support a proposal that Faith Matters should be asked to establish a service supporting Muslim victims of hate crime. Tell MAMA was founded under the direction of Fiyaz Mughal OBE and, more recently, his successor Iman Abou Atta OBE. Recognising the importance of the success of Tell MAMA to service Muslim victims, myself and other professionals dedicated time to support its development. The CST in particular, shared its knowledge to ensure that it has developed into the trusted partner it has become to the police and to victims. I have been incredibly impressed by the work undertaken by Tell MAMA since its establishment, as it provides a voice to individual victims and communities who often go unheard, while effectively partnering with other professionals. Perhaps one of its greatest efforts has been the work to reassure Muslim communities in the wake of terrorist attacks. Whether these acts are committed against the Muslim community or by someone from within, both pose the risk of retaliatory violence and, given that perpetrators aim to divide communities and exacerbate tensions, this work is essential to prevent an escalation of violence. By establishing such valuable partnerships we are able to deploy them in times of greatest need. One such example was in the days following the horrific terrorist attack in Manchester on 23 May 2017. In the days that followed, I worked closely alongside Tell MAMA and local colleagues to meet with angry and terrified groups from all sections of the community, to help reduce the tensions that both the terrorist and anti-Muslim hate-mongers would seek to create. Despite the high praise that I have for Tell MAMA, it has not been without its critics and its leaders have been under almost constant attack from different and even opposing directions including:

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•

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From the far right: This was perhaps the most unsurprising hostility faced by Tell MAMA and its leadership. Their unprincipled and ill-informed views hold any Muslim responsible for the acts of an individual from within that community, but especially for one who is seen to be defending the human rights of the innocent. For this reason, any public statement of support for victims attracts a myriad of ‘what about. . .’ comments, as though the defence against hate seeks to justify and equivalent act. A permanent characteristic of a fascist bigot is that they will defend the rights of their group while justifying the same abuse of another. The Tell Mama leaders have been stoic in the face of this abuse, which often contains death threats. From within the Muslim community: Perhaps more unexpectedly, Tell MAMA has also been subject to vociferous abuse from within the Muslim community. This has included many unfounded allegations, some of which have been outright racist in nature. For example, some have accused the organisation, and particularly Fiyaz Mughal, of being ‘Zionist’ because they have worked with the CST. Others have attacked their ‘grassroots’ support because of their close working relationship with the police. However, perhaps the greatest inter-group hostility came when Tell MAMA made a stance in support of the human rights of others, despite this being one of their founding principles. This was perhaps the most perceptible when they stood against anti-Gay hate crime and appointed Gay rights advocate Peter Tatchell as a trustee in 2014. While there have been some genuine challenges for Tell MAMA over the years, I believe that the most vociferous criticism towards them has been ill-informed and disingenuous. General detractors: Hate crime policy is never universally supported and there will always be those who, for political or other reasons, will argue against it. Some claim that it provides a two-tier level of justice and others argue that it takes away services from ‘more deserving’ crimes. The prevalence of anti-Muslim hostility in recent years means that Tell MAMA receive more exposure than other similar groups, perhaps eliciting greater scrutiny and challenge. Despite this, I hold Tell MAMA and its leaders in the highest regard and their continued success is essential if we are to further the rights of Muslims and break down the ignorance and hostility that sadly exists in all communities.

Muslim community challenges It would be wrong to discuss anti-Muslim hate crime without mention of the hostilities that exist within the UK and other Muslim communities. There are the fascist and hate-fuelled extremists who seek to attack and divide communities based on their warped and hateful interpretation of religious or other ideology, but there are other hugely harmful hostilities including: •

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Sectarian hostility: The horrific murder of Ahmadiyya Muslim shopkeeper, Asad Shah in Glasgow in March 2016 was one of the most publicised and outrageous demonstrations of sectarian hatred within the UK Muslim communities in recent years. However, this is not the only example. Hostility based on theological interpretations, cultural or political activity elsewhere in the world, or a desire for representative power in communities, is a recipe for division. When these divisions are promoted or allowed to ferment they then undermine the rights and safety of all citizens, with an ever-increasing risk of escalating violence. Theological and community leaders have a responsibility to promote inclusivity and to stand beside their counterparts to defend universal rights; all too often populist speakers fan the flames of hostility rather than seeking to quell it. The UK stance is clear; sectarian violence is a hate crime, but we know that it is massively underreported and this is to the detriment of us all, particularly the non-violent, decent majority who value diversity.

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Gay Muslims: The clash between religious communities and LGB citizens is not uncommon in the UK and worldwide. Europe is better placed than many parts of the world, as the European Convention on Human Rights protects all rights equally. Rights such as the right to life, to protect free speech and to be protected from discrimination are all enshrined and, where one person’s right impinges on another’s freedom, the Convention guides courts in balancing them. In terms of hate crime, this usually appears in the clash between religious expression and practices and the LGB communities right to be protected from discrimination and abuse. The cultural objection to LGB people who are Muslims or originate from less ‘enlightened’ states is greater than it is where their rights have been fought for in open debate. I believe that LGB individuals are less likely to be open about their sexual orientation in these more traditional, conservative cultures and, as such, they are more likely to be subject to isolation, hostility and abuse. LGB and transgender Muslims are likely to face multiple types of abuse in their lives and have every right to demand our protection and also to expect the support of community leaders in speaking out against hostility. This is why the acts of leadership and courage from LGBT Muslims who speak out about their sexual orientation are so important, as is the support of others, such as that mentioned about Tell MAMA above. Atheist and ex-Muslims: The Oxford English Dictionary describes ‘apostasy’ as ‘the abandonment or renunciation of a religious or political belief’ and this is a contentious issue for fundamentalist sections of many religions, including some Muslims. Indeed the American civil society group, the International Humanist and Ethical Union, state that there are still 13 predominantly Muslim States where apostasy or blasphemy can effectively bring about the death penalty. It is not surprising, then, that secularists and atheists are fearful of their safety, particularly when they speak out publicly against violence or in support of their rights.

The UK and European laws are clear that we have an equal right to have no faith and to reject the teachings of any or all religions. It is vital that all religious communities and their leaders share this stance and uphold the rights of individuals, even if they have chosen to reject their earlier religious beliefs. There is an absolute need for Muslims and community advocates to demand that the state and the community in general, support their fundamental rights to be protected from targeted abuse and hate crime. However, it is also incumbent on the same voices to condemn similar abuses against others, whether they are gay Muslims, from other Muslim sects, former Muslims or Jews. The best way of protecting the rights of any group is to stand up for everyone else’s. As the Race for Justice Declaration states: ‘If you can condemn all hate crime you are part of the solution, if you can only condemn some then you are part of the problem.’

Notes 1 The Guardian reported ‘More than 1,000’ ITV news reported ‘around 1,000’. 2 The Independent reported 100–250 protesters and The Guardian ‘less than 300’. 3 See www.nhs.uk/conditions/phobias. 4 See www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/16session/A.HRC.RES.16.18_en.pdf. 5 Reproduced at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cairo_Declaration_on_Human_Rights_in_Islam. 6 Populations estimated at 60 million for Italy and 54 million for England and Wales. 7 See http://report-it.org.uk/files/faith_hate_crime_true_vision_2015-16_v2.pdf. 8 It does administer some security funds on behalf of the government and has had small financial grants to develop specific products on behalf of all victims. 395

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References Association of Chief Police Officers. 2013. Indicative Breakdown of Police Recorded Religious Hate Crimes England Wales and Northern Ireland – 2011. Retrieved on 11 June 2018 from http://report-it. org.uk/files/religious_hate_crime_data_2011_published_(june_2013)_1.pdf College of Policing. 2014. Hate Crime Operational Guidance. London: College of Policing. Home Office. 2003. Statistics on Race and the Criminal Justice System – 2003. Published under section 95 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991. London: Home Office. Home Office. 2001. Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team Chaired by Ted Cantle. London: Home Office. Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. 2017. Hate Crime Reporting. Retrieved on 11 June 2018 from http://hatecrime.osce.org Tell MAMA. 2017. A Constructed Threat: Identity, Intolerance and the Impact of Anti-Muslim Hatred: Tell MAMA Annual Report 2016. Retrieved from https://tellmamauk.org/constructed-threat-identityintolerance-impact-anti-muslim-hatred-tell-mama-annual-report-2016. United Kingdom Attorney General’s Office (2006) Report of the Race for Justice Taskforce. Retrieved on 11 June 2018 from www.report-it.org.uk/files/race_for_justice_taskforce_report.pdf.

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32 Governmental responses to Islamophobia in the UK A two-decade retrospective Chris Allen

Introduction It is just over two decades since Islamophobia was afforded political recognition in the UK. Prompted by the publication of the 1997 Runnymede Trust report on behalf of the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia (CBMI), it straightforwardly defined Islamophobia as ‘a useful shorthand way of referring to the dread or hatred of Islam . . . and, therefore, to fear or dislike all or most Muslims’ (CBMI 1997, p. 1). Since then, Islamophobia has been an emotive issue: to advocates pressing government to address the phenomenon, Islamophobia is a growing and increasingly worrying phenomenon that has the potential to impact the everyday lives of British Muslims; to detractors – many of whom dismiss the phenomenon out of hand – it is little more than an unnecessary shield behind which Muslims deflect legitimate criticism about themselves and their religion. While not always as necessarily polarised, a similar dichotomy can be seen in the political spaces also, with politicians and political opinion veering from Islamophobia being the most serious discriminatory phenomenon of our time through to it being an unwanted consequence of the ‘problems’ associated with Muslim communities. This chapter reflects on the past two decades in the UK to consider how successive British governments have responded to Islamophobia since the publication of the CBMI report in 1997. Beginning with a short overview that affords some context about the issue of religious-based discrimination in the UK, it proceeds by first considering the New Labour government from 1997 to 2010 before second, considering the Conservative-led Coalition and Conservative majority governments from 2010 through to 2017. In conclusion, some comparisons between the different approaches will be compared.

Governmental policies before Runnymede and the CBMI Discrimination on the basis of religion clearly precedes the political recognition afforded to Islamophobia in the late 1990s, as indeed does successive British government’s attempts to engage with different faith and religious issues. In terms of discrimination on the basis of religion specifically, this can be largely traced back to the mid-1980s when a greater political openness to more social and civic versions of religion became evident as did a 397

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much greater impetus to tackling inequalities and discrimination within the political sphere (McLoughlin 2010). While not always apparent at the national level, a distinct shift was occurring in the more localised, urban conurbations where inequalities and discrimination were seen to be on the rise (Cooper 2004). Rather than developing new policies and legislation, there a focus emerged around extending prevailing principles of equality to newer and what would be, more controversial markers of identity including sexual orientation and religion. These went beyond the traditional markers of race, class and gender to necessarily see religion as more than mere beliefs and practices. Achieving only minor breakthroughs at the national level, the changes did leave a legacy on political thinking. Change was catalysed with the fallout from the Satanic Verses affair, prompting some to call for religious discrimination to be made unlawful while also extending blasphemy laws to include other religions. For Weller (2006), this acted as both lightning rod and magnifying glass for Britain’s Muslims. As he explains, the lightning rod galvanised communities and organisations to employ religion as a marker of individual and corporate identity while the magnifying glass began the process greater political and public scrutiny being placed on Muslims, their communities and organisations. Soon after in 1991, the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) gave its support to calls for protection to be afforded on the basis of religious markers: ‘it is at present within the law to incite hatred against a religious community and to discriminate against a person because of their religion, unless affiliation to a religion happens to be recognised as membership of an ethnic group’ (cited in Blakemore and Drake 1996, p. 115). With little evidence to substantiate the claims, the calls had little impact politically. Nonetheless, bolstered by the CRE the UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs (UKACIA) pursued the issue, publishing a report in 1993 entitled, Muslims and the Law in Multi-Faith Britain: the Need for Reform. Focusing on the 1975 White Paper on racial discrimination, UKACIA called for comparative protection on the basis of religion to be legislated for (Weller 2006). As before though, UKACIA was unable to provide evidence to support its calls and so again, the report had little political impact. In response, the CRE conducted a survey of agencies that dealt with complaints of religious discrimination to try and gather the necessary evidence. Evidence was again not forthcoming, this time due to the low numbers of responses received (Weller 2006). That same year, the Anti-Discrimination (Amendment) Act 1994 was introduced which extended levels of protection afforded to ethnic groups under the Race Relations Act (RRA) 1976 to mono-ethnic religious groups, namely Jews and Sikhs. While the legislation did not extend protection to Muslims – due to them being multi-ethnic – some specific interest about Islamophobia began to emerge. Published by the Runnymede Trust, the Commission on AntiSemitism’s report noted that not only were levels of religious discrimination increasing but so too were the perpetrators identifying new targets, those new targets being Muslims. While the report failed to provide any concrete evidence to support its claims, it did name this new trend in religious discrimination as Islamophobia. In response, the CBMI was established and three years later its report, Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All was published (CBMI 1997). According to Weller, this ‘moved the terms of the debate quite significantly’ given that it ‘introduced into public discourse the notion that, alongside shared dynamics of discriminatory experience, there may also be particularities of Muslim experience signalled by the word “Islamophobia”’ (Weller 2006, p. 306). Setting out 60 recommendations for both national and local government as so the voluntary and private sectors, the report intended to initiate ‘decisive action’ across the education, employment, health and housing sectors as also the media (CBMI 1997, p. iii). As noted previously, while the report undoubtedly shaped subsequent understandings about what Islamophobia was and what was meant by it, its recommendations had much less impact (Allen 2010). This was evident at the report’s launch when the then Home Secretary, 398

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Jack Straw, rejected two of the report’s major recommendations, relating to equity for statefunded faith-schools and specific legislation to protect against Islamophobia (ibid.). Despite the report identifying Islamophobia as a distinct discriminatory phenomenon, Straw instead conflated manifestations of Islamophobia with manifestations of ‘racial’ violence by suggesting that addressing the latter would somehow address the former. From the outset then, New Labour did not appear to recognise Islamophobia as distinct and different, something that seemingly influenced and shaped its ensuing thinking and approaches about Islamophobia throughout the rest of its time in government.

New Labour approaches to Islamophobia Despite being associated with the now infamous phrase ‘we don’t do god’ (Allen 2011c), the New Labour government was more open to faith and religion than its predecessor. For GilliatRay (2004), Prime Minister Tony Blair’s language of ‘social inclusion’ went beyond material wealth and poverty to incorporate wider notions relating to citizenship and equality of opportunity among others. The capacity for faith groups to provide voluntary services was crucial to this not least because it attributed religion and religious communities with a new sense of economic viability (ibid.). There were other drivers underpinning New Labour’s greater receptivity to to religion and faith also including among others: the rising levels of social deprivation experienced by some religious communities (Anwar and Bakhsh 2003; Woodhead 2010); demographic changes necessitating the establishment of non-historical religious traditions in the UK (Davie 1994; Bruce 1996); and an increasing number of people choosing to identify themselves by their religion (Oliver-Dee 2009). For Harris et al. (2003, p. 96), there was also ‘the personal moral and Christian commitment of several members of the government including the prime minister’. And of course, there was a clear recognition of the potential growth of anti-Muslim and anti-Islam attitudes post-9/11 (CBMI 2004; Allen 2007). For McLoughlin (2003), this was the single most important driver, prompting unprecedented levels of engagement with Muslim communities via Muslim organisations in particular, the Muslim Council of Britain. In terms of addressing religious discrimination as opposed to Islamophobia specifically, New Labour was active. First, the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998, which established the freedom of religion or belief for all citizens within the British constitution. Second the commissioning of research into religious discrimination a year later which led to a report being published in 2001, titled Religious Discrimination in England and Wales (Weller et al. 2001). Given that previous endeavours to better understand religious discrimination had failed to have political impact due to a lack of supporting evidence, so this was an extremely positive development. However, despite the majority of Muslim respondents believing hostility and abuse directed towards them had risen, there was some disquiet among certain sectors of Muslim communities, critical of the failure to be specific about what Muslims were experiencing and to name this Islamophobia (Weller 2006, pp. 307–308). Nonetheless, recommendations were made to address religious discrimination including the extension of one or more pieces of race relations legislation, the HRA or the largely defunct blasphemy laws (Allen 2017). The creation of new laws – both specific and generic – was also recommended, prompting a further government commissioned report in 2001 entitled, Tackling Religious Discrimination: Practical Implications for Policy-Makers and Legislators (Hepple and Choudhury 2001). From the outset, therefore, New Labour appeared determined to better evidence religious discrimination. While progress was seemingly being made, it is worth noting that such investigations were taking place against the backdrop of 9/11 and the reality that there had been a sharp increase in Islamophobic incidents targeted against Muslims in Britain (Allen and Nielsen 2002). 399

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New Labour’s John Denham did acknowledge this, noting the spectre of a cancer-like Islamophobia having the potential to spread through British society (Allen 2010). Denham’s statement was however somewhat anomalous in the New Labour canon. Whether inadvertently or otherwise, New Labour rarely specifically referred to or spoke about Islamophobia. Instead, New Labour’s focus appeared to shift away from addressing discrimination on the basis of religion to the need to protect British society from the threat posed by Al Qaeda inspired terrorism (Allen 2013). Consequently, when it did refer to Islamophobia – as also religious discrimination and religiously-motivated hate more widely – it did so within the discursive frame of increased security, counter-terror and the need to tackle Islamist extremism. So when New Labour introduced legislation to protect those at risk from assault or abuse on the basis of their religion – not specifically Muslims it is necessary to stress – it did so via the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. In doing so, it extended existing legislative protections against violence to religious communities. This was supported by extending sentencing provisions for offences aggravated by hostility towards victims because of their religion (as well as sexual orientation or disability) via the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and making an offence of using threatening words or behaviour with the intention of stirring up hatred on the basis of religion through the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. Any specific reference to Islamophobia however remained invisible. Where Muslims and Islam did feature as regards New Labour was within the policy discourses linked to counter-terror, security and tackling extremism, something that become even more pronounced following the London attacks on 7/7. A full and critical analysis of governmental approaches to tackling extremism can be found in Kundnani’s, A Decade Lost: Rethinking Radicalisation and Extremism (Kundnani 2015). Nonetheless, whether New Labour were seeking to curtail and control radical preachers, proscribe extremist groups, or introduce new offences including acts preparatory to or encouraging of terrorism and disseminating terrorist publications, research shows that this undue focus on Muslims and their communities reinforced many of the public’s fears and anxieties (Briggs et al. 2006; Khan 2009). These fears and anxieties were further reinforced by the media where in the aftermath of 7/7, the amount of news stories and reports about Muslims and Islam were shown to have grown exponentially, by more than 260 per cent in the preceding decade (Allen et al. 2007). More worrying was that more than 90 per cent of that coverage focused on matters relating to violence, conflict and terrorism. History may offer an interesting insight into why New Labour policy took the direction it did. Both Solomos (1989) and Ratcliffe (2004) write about the close relationship former Labour governments discursively made between race relations and immigration. For Ratcliffe (2004), despite introducing the RRA 1968, the Labour government at the time wanted to be seen to be tough on immigration and so introduced the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 as a counterbalance at the same time; similar too the Race Relations Act 1965 and the 1965 White Paper on Commonwealth Immigrants. To what extent then did New Labour feel the need to be ‘tough’ on counter-terror and extremism in the same way that it had immigration previously? There is of course the argument that it was the political situation which dictated this rather more than any given political ideology. Nonetheless, two quite disparate social issues did become linked during New Labour’s time in government resulting in a particularistic Islamophobia seemingly being lost or at least seen to be consequential of terror atrocities. In this respect, the last recorded occasion of Islamophobia being specifically referred to by New Labour is somewhat indicative. During an interview for the Muslim News, the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown stated that his government was determined to address Islamophobia if it won a further term in government. While welcomed, the interview was about New Labour’s proposed counter-terror policies and legislation and how Muslim communities had a role to play in them. 400

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While Brown stated towards the end of New Labour’s term that his government had been committed to addressing Islamophobia, little evidence supports this. One way he maybe believed this was going to be achieved was in the overseeing of the broadening of the equalities framework, one that extended protection against discrimination on the basis of age, sexual orientation and religion or belief (and none). Described as a ‘radical change’ by Riddell and Watson (2011, p. 191), New Labour introduced legislative protection on the basis of religion or belief or the first time under the Equality Act 2006 before being further strengthened by the Equality Act 2010. Building on the European Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003 which extended protection across all forms of employment against discrimination, harassment and victimisation, the 2006 Act also established the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), a non-departmental public body with responsibility for the promotion and enforcement of equality and non-discrimination laws in England, Scotland and Wales. As with Weller’s research half a decade previous however, some Muslims were once again unhappy that Islamophobia appeared to have been ignored or at least overlooked in the developments around the broadening equalities framework. Rarely if indeed ever mentioned by the politicians and policymakers overseeing the changes, outputs from the EHRC have since reflected this, Islamophobia receiving scant attention, as in a 2010 report, Religion or Belief: Identifying Issues and Priorities (Woodhead 2010). It is also worth noting that despite the EHRC monitoring issues of discrimination on the basis of religion or belief, it continues not to disaggregate its data by the religion of victims thereby creating a situation where identifying who is being discriminated against becomes extremely difficult to ascertain. What impact, if indeed any, the paucity of acknowledgment for Islamophobia as a specific phenomenon had is questionable. As research published at the end of New Labour’s term in government shows, over the period of it being in power, more people in Britain came to believe that Muslims were likely to encounter prejudice on the basis of their religion (Allen 2013). More so, 83% felt that the levels of prejudice Muslims experienced were higher than five years beforehand. Public attitudes towards Muslims and Islam also detrimentally changed during New Labour’s government as highlighted by the 2009–2010 British Social Attitudes Survey. Not only did Muslims emerge as the least popular religious community in the UK but more than half of respondents said that they would be bothered by a large mosque being built in their local area. In comparison, only 15% stated they would feel similar if it was a large church (National Centre for Social Research 2010). Such findings are not Islamophobic per se although they are indicative of a changing landscape within which public attitudes were shown to be becoming increasingly negative towards Muslims and Islam. And this was felt by Muslims themselves who at the end of New Labour’s time in government were shown to be the most likely to fear attack due to the colour of their skin, race or religion (Allen 2013). Of those who were victims, nearly half believed this to be perpetrated on the basis of their religion. Despite the introduction of new legislation as also the extensive broadening of the equalities framework therefore, Muslims continued to feel that more needed to be done (Allen 2013). In reflecting on the New Labour years therefore, it must be concluded that it remained unconvinced of Islamophobia as a particularistic or distinct discriminatory phenomenon. Seemingly evident from the outset, New Labour instead seemed convinced that such discrimination was founded on markers of religion or belief as opposed to Islam and Muslim-ness more specifically. Likewise, New Labour also appeared to be unconvinced that the drivers, characteristics and manifestations of Islamophobia were also particularistic or distinct. This then is why it would seem that New Labour chose to introduce no specific policies or legislation to specifically address Islamophobia or even routinely speak about or refer to it in any specific ways during its three terms of government. While tackling discrimination and inequality were 401

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of paramount concern therefore, New Labour’s approach focused on broadening the existing equalities framework to encompass a greater number of markers against which discrimination might be perpetrated. By tackling the problem broadly and generally, the expectation was that this would address the specific and the particular. While there may be some rationale for adopting such an approach, it does overlook the fact that during the period of time that New Labour was broadening the equalities framework much was happening – nationally and internationally – that was both specific and particular to Muslims and the religion of Islam.

Conservative-led approaches to tackling Islamophobia If speaking about or referring to Islamophobia as a specific and distinct phenomenon was rare under New Labour, the opposite has been largely true of Conservative-led governments. This is maybe surprising given the Conservative-led Coalition stated that equality issues would not be a priority soon after returning to power in 2010 (Riddell and Watson 2011, p. 194). Unlike New Labour however, the Coalition did not appear to see Islamophobia as a discriminatory phenomenon that readily sat within the equalities framework. This was evident in the first speech made by a member of the Coalition about Islamophobia, the 2011 speech in London by the then co-chair of the Conservative Party, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi. Having previously announced the Coalition was a government that ‘did god’, Warsi stated that Islamophobia had passed ‘the dinner table test’ whereby the expression of anti-Muslim sentiment and attitudes had become socially acceptable through conversational civility (Batty 2011). For her, ordinary British people – especially the middle classes – were increasingly becoming comfortable saying things about Muslims they would feel uncomfortable saying about other minorities. Without doubt, Warsi’s speech put the issue of Islamophobia firmly on the political and public radar soon after the Coalition came to power. Two developments further illustrate how the Coalition and Conservative-majority governments since sought to adopt a different approach to New Labour. First was the establishment of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Islamophobia in 2010; second, the establishment of the Cross-Government Working Group on Anti-Muslim Hatred in 2012. As well as acknowledging that Islamophobia was particularistic and distinctly different from other discriminatory phenomena, the Coalition clearly seemed to prefer the approach previously adopted to address Anti-Semitism what with it previously having had an APPG and working group. It is interesting to however that while the APPG referred to Islamophobia, the Cross-Government Working Group did not. It is anecdotally believed that this was in response to a report published by the Quilliam Foundation which stated that the alleged confusion associated with the term Islamophobia had been exploited by ‘Islamists and Wahhabis’; using the term, it went on, handed a ‘propaganda coup to Islamists’ (Readings et al. 2011, p. 14). Whether correct or otherwise, it is interesting to note how the term Islamophobia continued to create contestation even for a government that had previously and openly spoken about it. While so, since the end of the Coalition, many in the political spaces have again begun to prefer the term Islamophobia. While these developments appear to show a clear departure from the approach adopted by New Labour, it might be suggested that things would have changed irrespective of who had won the 2010 General Election. This is because the push to establish the APPG on Islamophobia began with a closed parliamentary meeting in March 2010, thereby pre-dating the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition. Likewise, APPGs are informal cross-party groups that have no official status within Parliament and so have no formal endorsement from the government at the time. Run by and for Members of the Commons and Lords however, many do also involve individuals and organisations from outside Parliament in their 402

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administration and activities. As such, the APPG was not a development of the Coalition government nor was it established by it. Nonetheless, the APPG on Islamophobia was launched in November 2010 with a remit to: investigate the forms, manifestations and extent of discrimination against Muslims in today’s Britain; review the effectiveness of relevant legislation; review existing mechanisms for recording anti-Muslim hate crimes; and, investigate the role of the media in fostering intolerance towards Muslims (Allen 2017). As before, this was very similar to the aims of the APPG on Anti- and would seek to inform and influence government via the Cross-Government Working Group that was to be established in 2012. As with all things relating to Islamophobia however, the APPG was soon dogged by controversy. Following the appointment of iENGAGE (a London-based Muslim organisation that is also sometimes referred to as ENGAGE) as the APPG’s Secretariat, a number of the APPG’s Parliamentarians publicly resigned in protest including the Chair and Vice-Chair, Conservative MP Kris Hopkins and Lord Janner of Braunstone respectively. While a full narrative of events can be found in Allen’s (2011a) report, A Momentous Occasion, the APPG’s members removed iENGAGE as Secretariat in 2011 before re-launching it. Achieving tentative cross-party support it began to fashion a work programme. Progress since has been extremely slow however. Despite a number of hearings having since been organised – on education, the media and responses to the murder of Lee Rigby in May 2013 among others – the APPG’s activities have been incoherent and lacking strategic purpose. Unsurprisingly therefore, there have been no outputs from the APPG, not even transcripts or records of the evidence presented at any of the hearings. Despite broadly reflecting the approach adopted to address anti-Semitism – where the APPG collected evidence and produced formal outputs including a series of recommendations to Parliament and policymakers – the APPG on Islamophobia failed in this respect. While on the one hand therefore the APPGs on Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism were initially similar, the respective development and impact of the two could not have been any more different. In this respect, it is unclear whether the APPG on Islamophobia still exists especially as in the summer of 2017 a new APPG on British Muslims emerged that appears to have been undertaking many similar activities to the Islamophobia equivalent previously. The Cross-Government Working Group on Anti-Muslim Hate was established in January 2012 with the intention of working closely with the APPG on a number of common themes (Allen 2017) and was made up of different members including representatives from Muslim and civil society organisations as also an imam and academics all of whom were said to have had relevant expertise in the field. Unlike the APPG, the Working Group appeared well structured and quickly moved towards developing a work programme. The priority goals included the need to strengthen the evidence base for Islamophobia, challenge the role of the media, increase the reporting and recording of Islamophobia, and better understand and subsequently respond to Islamophobia online. As part of this, various sub-groups were created within which different members were charged to use their respective expertise. While so, one of the criticisms posited at the Working Group was that there was very little external engagement, both in terms of more traditional outputs and in establishing a public face thereby enabling the Group to comment and respond to appropriate events and junctures. Despite some high profile resignations from academic members shortly before the end of the Coalition’s term of government (Allen 2014; Goodwin 2015), the Working Group appears to have continued to exist under the two Conservative-majority governments that have followed. While so, the same criticisms remain valid: there would still appear to be no formal outputs from the Working Group and very few people not connected with it are aware of its existence. Reflecting on the activities of the Working Group over the past few years, a number of opportunities to make a positive impact as regards addressing Islamophobia would appear to 403

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have been either lost or simply missed. This is apparent in terms of informal or non-direct developments. So while the Working Group supported the establishment of the first Srebrenica Genocide Memorial Day in 2013, and showed support for initiatives such as the Big Iftar, not only is it unclear the extent to which these fitted with the initial terms of reference of the Working Group but, more importantly, what impact these had in specifically addressing or reducing levels of Islamophobia. The Working Group also missed opportunities to raise awareness of its work publicly. So while the terms of reference stated that the Working Group would respond to local or international events, there is little evidence to suggest that it did, failing to make any public statement whatsoever in relation to the planting of three nail bombs outside mosques in the West Midlands, the murder of Mohammed Saleem in Birmingham, the allegations that Muslims were plotting to infiltrate and ‘take-over’ a number of Birmingham schools (coined Operation Trojan Horse), and the attack on the Finsbury Park Mosque in the summer of 2017 among others. Sadly, all happened and went without the Working Group making any public response whatsoever. Beyond the APPG and Working Group, there is one more recent development worthy of note in terms of the way in which Islamophobia has been approached and understood. While at the start of its time in government, the Conservative-led Coalition appeared to be ready to speak about and refer to Islamophobia as a specific phenomenon, in recent years – and while being a Conservative-majority – this would appear to have shifted. As with its New Labour predecessor, subsequent Conservative governments have begun to frame Islamophobia within the context of security, counter-terror and matters of extremism. First evident in the publication of the Extremism Task Force report in December 2013, the most recent example followed the van attack on the Finsbury Park Mosque in 2017 and the response by Prime Minister Theresa May, who categorically stated that Islamophobia was a form of extremism as opposed to hate or discrimination. The flaws of this approach can be seen by reflecting on the previous Task Force report. Commissioned in the wake of Lee Rigby’s murder in May 2013, the report stated that it was necessary to tackle ‘extremism of all kinds, including the Islamophobia and neo-Nazism espoused by the murderer of Mohammed Saleem to justify his terrorist attacks against mosques in the West Midlands’ (Extremism Task Force 2013, p. 1). While commendable, it was the only reference in the entire report relating specifically to Islamophobia. Since then, little has been done to tackle Islamophobia as a form of extremism – or indeed anything else – as indeed has been the same since the Finsbury Park Mosque attack. Linking Islamophobia with extremism is therefore as misguided as it is insignificant.

Conclusion While the Conservative-led governments’ approaches to Islamophobia have been at times commendable and promising, it is questionable the extent to which they had any more impact on addressing Islamophobia than its New Labour predecessor. In some ways this is maybe more disappointing than it was under New Labour. While New Labour failed to recognise Islamophobia as a stand-alone, particularistic phenomenon, the Coalition and Conservatives clearly did thereby prompting the quick establishment of bodies that would investigate and duly respond. As is evident with the APPG and Working Group however, both have – for different reasons – been largely impotent. Failing to address or respond to significant events and developments to have occurred during their respective lifespans, the validity and worth of the APPG and Working Group must now be seriously questioned. Given the lack of dynamism shown over the past two decades in the British political spaces to seriously tackle Islamophobia, the worry is that the issue will merely fall off the political and policy radar. If so, then it is 404

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difficult to see a similar opportunity being made available in the foreseeable future: why would future governments commit to supporting something that has already been shown to fail? In this respect the past two decades might be seen as a major opportunity lost and one that may be looked back on in the future with significant regret. That regret may be felt even more acutely when it would appear – taking into account both the qualitative and quantitative data currently available – that Islamophobia continues to be on the increase. In terms of definition and evidence, there is little difference between New Labour and the Conservatives except, that is, in terms of conception. For New Labour, Islamophobia was a manifestation of discrimination based on markers of religion that in turn, could be readily incorporated within broader understandings of equalities and religion. By extending existing legislation therefore, it believed that this would afford suitable protection to other – and newer – forms of discrimination. Questions remain however because as research has shown, a significant driver for New Labour in its early years was the belief that Islamophobia was on the rise (Allen 2010, 2011b; Allen and Nielsen 2002). Why then did it not feature more particularly and prominently in political and policy discourses? As public attitudes towards Muslims and Islam also deteriorated over New Labour’s terms of government, such an approach might therefore be deemed to have failed. It is worth noting however that policy and legislation do not in themselves change public attitudes, they merely curb certain behaviours (Daniels and Macdonald 2005). Likewise Blakemore and Drake, who note that equalities policies ‘will not change the world’, adding, ‘they were never designed to . . . the policies were designed to win majority consent rather than to force change’ (Blakemore and Drake 1996, p. 210). As such, maybe New Labour’s equalities approach was a means to winning ‘majority consent’. Under the Conservatives, a clear shift away from aligning or incorporating Islamophobia with and within equalities has been evident not least in the greater alignment with the approach adopted as regards Anti-Semitism. In this way, Islamophobia – as Anti-Semitism before it – would appear to have been seen as rather more exceptional and extraordinary. Under the Conservatives, Islamophobia – at times expressed as anti-Muslim hatred – was spoken about and referred to as having distinct and differentiable features and characteristics: particularistic. Under New Labour, this was quite the opposite, far more generalistic, ordinary and not at all exceptional from other discriminatory phenomena. There are some good reasons for perceiving Islamophobia in this way. The first relates to the historical roots of Islamophobia’s emergence and the first acknowledgement of it in the Runnymede Trust report exploring contemporary anti-Semitism. Second, in the past two decades Islamophobia has been preferred by far-right and neo-Nazi groups as the ideology of choice, substituting Islamophobia in preference of traditional anti-Jewish and anti-Judaism ideologies. For the Coalition, therefore, maybe it saw a better argument for perceiving and subsequently seeking to address Islamophobia in line with anti-Semitism rather than other discriminatory phenomena such as racism and homophobia. There also needs to be some reflection on the political discourses and settings of New Labour and the Conservatives. For New Labour – as also the Conservatives latterly – a strong discursive link was made and subsequently reiterated between those associated to te tackling of religiouslymotivated prejudice, discrimination and crimes with the discourses associated with terror and security. As Becker et al. (2012) among others have noted, discourses are widely recognised as tools with which politicians routinely introduce, affirm, reiterate and reinforce policy and thinking but so too embed unwritten and unofficial policies and thinking also. This linking therefore has the potential to have a detrimental impact. First, in reinforcing the public’s pre-existing fears and anxieties about Muslims and Islam; second, in placing Muslims and their communities under greater pressure through more scrutiny and questioning, a consequence of which is the potential for greater feelings of anger, alienation, mistrust, and even increase the likelihood of 405

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radicalisation (Briggs et al. 2006; Khan 2009). Set against a discursive backdrop of those such as Jack Straw’s suggestion that the wearing of the niqab – full-face covering – presented a barrier to integration (Allen 2010), John Reid’s requesting Muslim families look for ‘tell-tale’ signs of extremism in their children (Allen 2013), and the Department of Education requesting universities to ‘spy’ on students vulnerable to extremist ideologies (Allen 2010, 2013), the policy discourse of New Labour was not always differentiable from some of the more explicit discourses emanating from the populist far-right: for instance, the BNP and EDL. One might even question the extent to which New Labour’s discourses attributed greater legitimacy to the far-right especially given its unprecedented growth during the three terms of New Labour government. While the early years of government as part of the Coalition may have been marked by a more positive and specific discourse about Islamophobia, recent discourses and narratives put forward by the Conservatives have had a much greater resonance with New Labour. As both the 2013 Extremism Task Force report and the post-Finsbury Park Mosque attack speech by Theresa May abo highlight, Islamophobia remains linked with counter-terror and extremism. Maybe successive governments have viewed extremism and terror to be of greater import than Islamophobia in terms of its wider societal impact. Maybe they were far more cynical, making timely statements about Islamophobia as a means by which to co-opt and bring ‘on side’ Muslims and their communities. The evidence available here offers little beyond mere speculation and so it is recommended that a more systematic review of the political discourses of both the Conservative and New Labour governments about the Muslim ‘Other’ and the ‘problems’ attributed to them be undertaken. What emerges then is a complex and contested picture, one that appears to be somewhat confused. The ‘momentous occasion’ spoken about at the APPG’s 2011 launch now appears overblown, the opportunity to address Islamophobia appearing to have been lost. In this respect, it would seem highly unlikely that in the UK Islamophobia will be suitably and appropriately addressed in the foreseeable future.

References Allen, C. 2007. Down with multiculturalism, book-burning and Fatwas. Culture and Religion 8(2), 125–138. Allen, C. 2010. Islamophobia. London: Ashgate. Allen, C. 2011a. A Momentous Occasion: A Report on the All Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia and its Secretariat. London: APPG on Islamophobia. Allen, C. 2011b. Opposing Islamification or promoting Islamophobia? Understanding the English Defence League. Patterns of Prejudice, 45(4), 325–340. Allen, C. 2011c. ‘We don’t do God’: a critical retrospective of New Labour’s approaches to ‘religion or belief’ and ‘faith’. Culture and Religion, 12(3), 259–275. Allen, C. 2013. Passing the dinner table test: retrospective and prospective approaches to tackling Islamophobia in Britain. SAGE Open, 3(2), 215. Allen, C. 2014. Why I quit the government’s anti-Muslim hatred working group. Huffington Post, 20 October. Retrieved from www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-chris-allen/anti-muslim-hatred-workinggroup_b_6064866.html. Allen, C. 2017. Political approaches to tackling Islamophobia: an ‘insider/outsider’ analysis of the British Coalition Government’s approach between 2010–15. Social Sciences, 6(3), 77. Allen, C. and Nielsen, J. 2002. Summary Report on Islamophobia in the EU after 11 September 2001. Vienna: EUMC. Allen, C., Aziz, M., Bunglawala, I., Gluck, A., Hameed, T. and Mair, H. 2007. The Search for Common Ground: Muslims, Non-Muslims and the UK Media. A Report Commissioned by the Mayor of London. London: Greater London Authority. Anwar, M. and Bakhsh, Q. 2003. British Muslims and State Policies. Coventry: Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations. Batty, D. 2011. Lady Warsi claims Islamophobia is now socially acceptable in Britain. The Guardian, 20 January. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jan/20/lady-warsi-islamophobia-muslims-prejudice. 406

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Becker, S., Bryman, A. and Ferguson, H. 2012. Understanding Research for Social Policy and Social Work. Bristol: Policy Press. Blakemore, K. and Drake, R. 1996. Understanding Equal Opportunity Policies. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall. Briggs, R., Fieschi, C. and Lownsbrough, H. 2006. Bringing it Home: Community-Based Approaches to Counter-Terrorism. London: Demos. Bruce, S. 1996. Religion in the Modern World: From Cathedrals to Cults. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CBMI. 1997. Islamophobia: a Challenge for Us All: Report of the Runnymede Trust Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia London: Runnymede Trust. CBMI. 2004. Islamophobia: Issues, Challenges and Action. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books. Cooper, D. 2004. Challenging Diversity: Rethinking Equality and the Value of Difference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Daniels, K. and Macdonald, L. 2005. Equality, Diversity and Discrimination. London: CIPD. Davie, G. 1994. Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging. Oxford: Blackwell. Extremism Task Force. 2013. Tackling Extremism in the UK. London: Home Office. Gilliat-Ray, S. 2004. The trouble with ‘inclusion’: a case study of the faith zone at the Millennium Dome. The Sociological Review 52(4), 459–477. Goodwin, M. 2015. The fight against Islamophobia is going backwards. The Guardian, 19 October. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/19/islamophobia-governmentengagement-muslims-anti-hatred-taskforce. Harris, M., Halfpenny, P. and Rochester, C. 2003. A social policy role for faith-based organisations? Lessons from the UK Jewish voluntary sector. Journal of Social Policy 32(1), 93–112. Hepple, B. and Choudhury, T. 2001. Tackling Religious Discrimination: Practical Implications for Policy-Makers and Legislators. Home Office Research Study 221. London: Home Office. Khan, K. 2009. Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) & Prevent: A Response from the Muslim Community. London: An-Nisa Society. Kundnani, A. 2015. A Decade Lost: Rethinking Radicalisation and Extremism. London: Claystone. McLoughlin, S. 2003. Islam, citizenship and civil society: ‘new’ Muslim leaderships in the UK. In J. Cesari (ed.), European Muslims and the Secular State in a Comparative Perspective, pp. 100–124. Paris: Network of Comparative Research on Islam and Muslims in Europe. McLoughlin, S. 2010. From race to faith relations, the local to the national level: the state and Muslim organisations in Britain. In A. Kreienbrink and M. Bodenstein (eds), Muslim Organisations and the State: European Perspectives, pp. 123–149. Nürnberg: Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge. National Centre for Social Research 2010. British Social Attitudes Survey 2010, 26th edition. London: NCSR. Oliver-Dee, S. 2009. Religion and Identity: Divided Loyalties? London: Theos. Ratcliffe, P. 2004. ‘Race’, Ethnicity and Difference: Imaging the Inclusive Society. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Readings, G., Brandon, J. and Phelps, R. 2011. Islamisn and Language: How Using the Wrong Words Reinforces Islamist Narratives. London: Quilliam Foundation. Riddell, S. and Watson, N. 2011. Equality and human rights in Britain: principles and challenges. in Social Policy & Society 10(2), 193–203. Solomos, J. 1989. The politics of anti-discrimination legislation: planned social reform or symbolic politics? In R. Jenkins and J. Solomos (eds), Racism and Equal Opportunity Policies in the 1980s, 2nd edition, pp. 30–53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weller, P. 2006. Addressing religious discrimination and Islamophobia: Muslims and liberal democracies: the case of the United Kingdom. in Journal of Islamic Studies 17(3), 295–325. Weller, P. et al. 2001. Religious Discrimination in England & Wales Home Office research study 220. London: Home Office. Woodhead, L. 2010. Religion or Belief: Identifying Issues and Priorities. Manchester: Equality & Human Rights Commission.

407

Index

Abbas, M. 180–181 Abbas, T. 330 Abdul-Matin, Ibrahim, Green Deen 258 Abdulmutallab, Umar Farouq 179 Abu-Ras, W. 301 Abu-Rayya, H. 318–319 Abu-Salha, Razan 245, 302 Abu-Salha, Yusor 245, 302 Abu Sayyaf terror groups 290 abuse of power 170 academic interest in Islam 176 Achbita, Samira 129 activism (assaults) 200 Adebolajo, Michael 360 Adebowale, Michael 360 Adorno, T. 80 advertising revenues 381 advocacy organisations 381 les affaires des foulards 99, 112, 126, 267; see also hijabs (headscarves) Afghanistan 65 “Af-Pak” war 253 African-American defendants 75 African American Muslims 257 African-Americans 75 Afzal, Nazir 156 The Age 269 aggression-frustration hypothesis 78 Ahmad, M. 293 Ahmed, Mushin 156 Ahmed, S. 316 Ahsan, M. M. 177 airports 340–348; behaviour detection 345–346; consequences of discrimination 170, 346–347; encountering authorities 344; ethno-religious profiling 168–169; hyper-visibility of Muslim identities 169; relations with authorities 347; securitisation of Muslims 169–170; surveillance saturation 344–345 AJE interviews 329, 330 Akonjee, Maulama 247 alcohol culture 304–305 Alexander, C. 379 408

Alexander, Claire 60 Algeria 99, 266–267 Ali, Ayaan Hirsi 266 Ali, Makram 38 Ali, Muhammad 240 All American Yemeni Girls (Sarroub) 301 Allegretti, A. 326 Allen, Chris 12, 59, 316, 380; A Momentous Occasion (Allen) 403 Alliance of Buddhist Leaders 294 Allman, Kate 298–299, 301 All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Islamophobia 402–405 All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims 7 Al Muhajiroun group 178 Alpha Lambda Mu fraternity 306 Al Qaeda 28, 400 Al-Rawi, Ahmed 43 Alshelh, Zaynab 271–272 alter-globalisation movement 114 Alternative for Germany (AfD) 366; ‘Manifesto for Germany’ 369 ‘alternative lifestyles’ 355 ambassadors for Islam 317 Ambrosios, Metropolitan of Kalvryta 203, 204, 205 Ameli, S. R. 47, 48–49, 50, 282 American Jews 300 American Muslims 300 American Muslims for Palestine 260 Amiraux, V. 105 Anderson, David 343, 345 Anglophobia 161 Anniches 100 Ansari, H. 314 Antemurale omniae Christianitatis (bulwark of Christendom) 220 Anthimos, Metropolitan of Thessaloniki 202–203 anti-Arab racism 106 anti-clericalism 118 Anti-Defamation League 336 anti-immigrant/Islamophobic mobilisation 364 Anti-Islamisation Conference (2008) 365

Index

anti-migration, anti-refugee narrative 232 anti-Muslim: anti-Arab and anti-European discourse 232; and anti-Islamic 391 anti-Muslim attacks: Asia 288; ‘baseline’ of attacks 360; Britain 359–360; France 116; USA 302 anti-Muslim attitudes 189–190 anti-Muslim bigotry 12, 352 anti-Muslim Buddhist fundamentalist movements 293–294 anti-Muslim discrimination 137 anti-Muslim hate: defining 59; normalisation 39; see also Islamophobia anti-Muslim hate crimes: after Bataclan attacks 378, 380; after Islamist terrorism 375; Canada 282–283; election of Donald Trump 241, 276; and illiberal Islamophobic hate 67; prevalence of 391–392; use of term 388; victims 389, 391; see also hate crimes; Islamophobic hate crimes anti-Muslim hate groups 241 Anti-Muslim Hatred Working Group (UK) 390, 402, 403–404 anti-Muslim hostility 138, 391 anti-Muslim laïcité 104 anti-Muslim media content 380 anti-Muslim prejudice: defining 352; ‘dinner table test’ 358; and Islamophobia 12; use of term 14; vocabulary 328; see also Islamophobia anti-Muslim racism: in education 143; education 143; history and forms of dominance 307; Ireland 135, 137–138, 141–142, 143; and Islamophobia 36; liberals and liberal institutions 157 anti-Muslim sentiments: midterm elections (US 2010) 241; socially acceptable 157; studies of 2008 and 2012 (USA) 240; superior “us,” and an inferior “them” 241; use of term 388 anti-Muslim stereotypes 280 anti-racist movement 114 anti-refugee discourse 232 anti-religious acts 389 anti-religious hate crimes 93 anti-religious prejudice 59 anti-Semitism 13, 15, 22, 43, 44 anti-utopia 364 Antoniou, A. S. 374 Anwar, Aamer 168 “apathetic” Muslims 305 ‘apostasy’ (OED) 395 Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Asia (1999) 216 The Arab Mind (US military) 243 Arabness 260 Arabophobia 252 Arab political identities 259 Arain, Zainab 248 articulations 61–62 Asal, Houda 117 Asia 287–288

Asian female sexual abuse victims 152 ‘Asian grooming case’ (Yorkshire Post) 148 ‘Asian males’ 150 Asian-Muslim men 65 Askolovitch, Claude 115; Nos mals-aimés 117 Asotthalom (Hungary) 370 assaults 75; see also anti-Muslim attacks Association of Journalism Education in the UK (AJE) 326, 329, 330 asylum 225; see also immigration atheists 395 Athens 203–204 Atta, Abou 393 “The attitude of the Church towards the followers of other religions.” (Secretariat for NonChristians 1984) 216 attitude surveys 25, 401 attitudinal changes 34; see also Prevent policy (UK); radicalisation Auburn Swimming Pool (Sydney) 269 Aulnaysous-Bois (France) 101 Auroux, Jean 102 ‘austerity’ policies 135 Australia 263–272; burkini as an instrument of integration 264–265; Cronulla riot (2005) 264; Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) 265, 270; French reports on 268; modest fashion 268–269, 270; regulating Muslim women’s dress 266, 267–268; reporting French burkini ban 270, 271; symbol of the beach 264 The Australian 264, 265, 266, 271 Australian Muslims 341 Autain, Clémentine 119 authorities, and group-based identity 341 Avion (France) 100 avoidance behaviours 85, 90, 346 Awan, I. 85, 91 Axis II disorders 81 Ayatollah Khomeini 33 ‘Ayatollah of Aulnay-sous-Bois’ 101 Baby Loup crèche affaire 105, 112 ‘backward’ social practices 61 Badinter, Elisabeth 116–117 Balibar, Etienne 62, 327–328 Banton, Michael, Race Relations 20 Baptist Church shooting (Texas) 327 Barakat, Deah 245, 302 barbarism 127 Bardot, Brigitte 263 Bartlett, J. 375 Bashir, Amjad 156 Bastille Day truck murders (2016) 265 Bataclan attacks (2015) see Paris attacks (November 2015) Bates Treaty (1899) 289 409

Index

Batten, Gerard 354 battle of Lepanto (1571) 212 Baubérot, Jean 112 Baumann, J. 75 Bauman, Zygmunt 365 BBC 24, 26, 28 BBC News online 149–150 beaches, as a cultural symbol 264 bearded Muslim men caricatures 326 Becker, S. 405 behaviour: of perpetrators 387; responses to Islamophobia 90–91 Behaviour Detection Officers (BDOs) 344, 345 behaviour detection schemes 345–346 Belgian Counter-Islamophobia Collective (CCIB) 123, 127, 131 Belgian Muslim women: attacks on after ‘Islamic terror’ 127; gendered discrimination 130; hyper-fertility 126; niqab ban 128; in politics 130–131; threat and saviour narratives 127–130 Belgium 123–132; cultural diversity 124; gendered Islamophobia 125; Islamic religious education 125; linguistic regions 124; ‘long-skirt affair’ (2015) 128–129; Muslim community 124, 126; Muslims endangering ‘way of life’ trope 126; niqab ban law (2011) 128; secularism 124, 129; status of Islam 124; terror attacks (2016) 127 Ben Gurion International Airport (Tel Aviv) 342 Bennell, Barry 149 Bennett, S. 72 Bernardi, Cory 266, 268 Bhabha, Homi 316, 317 Bhattacharyya, Gargi 156–157 Bibi, Asia 218 Bigelow, M. 301 bigotry 71–72, 81 bikinis 263; see also burkinis biological determinism 23 biological inferences 22; see also racism ‘biological inherentism’ (Miles) 21 biological racism 22–23 Birdwell, J. 375 Bishop, Bronwyn 268 Bishops’ Conference, “Christian Dimension of Patriotism” (2017) 221 Black Lives Matter movement 306 black or minority ethnic (BME) journalists 333 Black Students’ Campaign 191 Blackwood, L. 169, 170, 171 Blair, Tony 399 Blake, L. 75 blasphemy laws 398 Błaszczak, Mariusz 215, 231 Blunt, Gary 335 boarding gates 344 Bobako, Monika 229, 230 Bodu Bala Sena movement (Sri Lanka) 288, 294 410

Bosnian civil war 33 Bosnian Muslim ethnic cleansing 22 Boston Marathon bombing (2013) 302 Bouattia, Malia 189 Bougnaoui, Asma 129–130 Bouvet, Laurent 116 Bowen, J. R. 103, 111 Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement 189, 260 Brexit 40, 355–356 Bridge Initiative (Georgetown University) 12 Britain First 72, 377, 378–379, 380, 381 British Empire: collapse 177; divide-and-rule in India 288 British identity 342 British Muslims: ambassador for Islam 317; and British Islam 35; complaints about airports 343; conflicting demands of hyphenated identities 317; criminalisation and alienation 155; disproportionate stops 343; ideological concerns 36; inferior to non-Muslim citizens 156; pro-integration 37; responses to Islamophobia 32–35; Salman Rushdie Affair 313–314; structural disadvantage and discrimination 40; visibility and negative representation 34; see also United Kingdom British Muslims survey 2006 (1990 Trust) 336 British National Party (BNP) 37, 148, 353, 358 ‘Britishness’ 315 British Pakistani Muslims 316 British Social Attitudes Survey (2009-2010) 401 British-Thai agreement (1909) 291 ‘British values’ 179, 315 Brown, Gordon 400–401 Brown, R. 375 Brown, W. 267 Bruckner, Pascal 117 Brussels 126 Brussels Zavantem international airport attack (2016) 127 Bruxelloises et Voilées 131 Buchowski, M. 215 Buddhism 291–292 Buddhist nationalism 294 Bunzl, M. 22 Buonfino, A. 376 ‘Burkini ban a step too far’ (The Australian) 271 Burkini controversies (2016) 106 burkini hysteria (Belgium) 126 burkinis 263–272; ban in Flemish Belgium 128; banning in France 271, 370; and cultural creep 270; Czech Republic 128n7; ‘enslavement of women’ 115; France 128n7; gesture of inclusion 264–265; ‘modest fashion’ 268–270; ‘modest’ swimming costume 263; ‘symbol of Islamic extremism’ 265; use of name 269 burqas 105, 267; see also veiling

Index

Busher, J. 182, 375, 380 Bush, George W. 58, 256 Bush, Laura 58 Butler, Judith 301 CAIR-CAN survey 279; see also Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI), Article 22(c) 388 California State University-San Bernardino (CSUSB) 241 Callinicos, Alex 113 Cameron, David 44, 390 “Campus Watch” 178 Canada: American media 276–277; anti-hate initiatives 283–284; anti-Muslim hate crime 282–283; antipathy toward Muslims 281; Bill C-51 (2015) 277; Conservative party leadership race (2016-2017) 278; exclusionary local policies 282; hybridised identities 320; Islamic identity 281; Islamophobia 276–279, 280–282; Islamophobic policy 51–55; media and politicians countering hatred 283; media creating toxic environment 280; patterns of Islamophobia 55; police-reported hate crimes 282; popular expressions of xenophobia 280–282; “Trumpism” 277; US border security practices 341 Canadian Council on American–Islamic Relations 282 Canadian Islamic Congress 279, 280, 282 Canadian Muslims survey (2002) 282 ‘Canadianness’ 341 “Canadian values” 278 Cannes (France) 265 Cantle, Ted 387 car parks 101 cartoon contest (2015) 65 cartoons affair (2005) 64 Catholic Church: and nationalism 215; and non-Christian religions 216–217; proselytising Filipinos 288; see also Christianity; Polish Catholic Church Caucasian defendants 75 causation 375 Cazeneuve, Bernard 115 CBC News (2016) 278 CBOS research 231 Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism (CSUSB) 241 Central Lanarkshire Mosque 162 Centre for Fascist, Anti-fascist and Post-fascist Studies (CFAPS Teesside University) 358, 359–360 Centre for Hate Studies (Leicester University) 354 Centre for Independent Studies 270 Chakraborti, N. 73, 375

Chamberlain, Walter 386 Champion, Sarah 153 Chapel Hill shooting (2015) 302 Charlie Hebdo attack (Paris 2015) 58, 64–65, 66–67, 116, 335–336, 360–361 Charter of Values (Marois) 278–279 check-in desks 344 Cheng, J. E. 42 Cherney, A. 341 Chicago 240 child sexual abuse see Rotherham and Rochdale child sexual abuse scandal Chirac, Jacques 112 Chong, Michael 279 Choudhry, Roshonara 179 Choudhury, T., Tackling Religious Discrimination 399 “Christian Dimension of Patriotism” (Bishops’ Conference 2017) 221 Christianity: in Muslim countries 218; persecution 218; violence in the name of 244–245; see also Catholic Church Christian militia 289 Christodoulos (Archbishop of Athens and All Greece) 202n16 Cisło, W. 218 “civic engagement” 254 Civic Platform (Poland) 214 civilisational incompatibility 368 “civilization jihad” 240 civil rights activism 253–254 civil society organisations (CSOs) 135, 381 Clark, K. 327 ‘clash of civilisations’ (Huntington) 205–206, 353, 367 class inequality 177 class system 36 Clegg, C. 162 Clifford, Max 149, 152 Clinton, Hillary 302 clothing regulation 266–268 coal-mines managerial note (1962) 100 Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France (CCIF) 111 college campuses 304 College of Policing, Hate Crime Operational Guidance 389 Collins, Jane 355 Cologne 66 colonialism: attitudes to racialized minorities 110; Islamophobia in Asia 287–288; universities 176; and white supremacy 241 Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) 398 Commission Nationale Consultative des Droits de l’Homme (CNCDH) 104, 117 Commission on Anti-Semitism (Runnymede Trust) 398 411

Index

Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia (CBMI, Runneymede Trust) 19–20, 397; see also Islamophobia (Runnymede/CBMI 1997); Runnymede Trust Commonwealth immigrants 177 community cohesion 34–35 Community Cohesion report (Cantle) 387 community confidence in policing 92 community impacts of Islamophobic hate crimes 84–94 Community Security Trust (CST) 356, 392 conduct disorder problems 81 Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) 101 conflating ethnic and religious characteristics 387, 389 conflating identities, situations and places 243 conflicting demands on hyphenated identities 317 ‘conscious European’ 229 Conservative-led governments (UK) 40, 402–404, 405 contemporary racisms 327 content curation 381 CONTEST (British counter terrorism strategy) 175 ‘conveyor belt’ theory 315 Conway, M. 376 Copenhagen attacks (2015) 361 Coppock, V. 181 Copsey, N. 377 Copsey, Nigel 353–354 Corbin, J. 377 Corsica 106 Cottle, S. 325 Couillard, Philippe 283 Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) 12, 240, 248, 255, 279, 300 counter-extremism 34 counter-hegemonic discourses 66 Countering Violent Extremism policies (USA) 302 Counter-Narratives to Islamophobia project 43 counter-stories of Muslim youth 301 counter-terrorism 18, 34 counter terrorism and security policy implementation 315 “covered” Muslims 305 Craig, K. 75 Crespo, Carlos 130 Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) 84, 389 criminalisation and alienation 155 criminal justice system 91–94 ‘Crisis in the Buddhist World’ conference (Alliance of Buddhist Leaders) 294 crisis of capitalism 37 Cronulla riot (Australia 2005) 264 cross-cultural psychology 80 cross-ethnic coalition 260–261 cross-racial affiliations 257 412

Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) 93 crusades 218 ‘Crypteia’ group (Greece) 200n4 cultural creep 270 cultural diversity 124 cultural essentialism 22 cultural exclusionism 23 culturalised targeting 23 cultural phenomena 46 cultural prejudice 167 cultural racism 19, 22–23, 32–40 cultural threats 127; see also Muslim women’s clothing culture of fear 199 “culture talk” (Mamdani) 258 cumulative extremism 359, 360, 361, 375, 378–379; see also violence Curtis, Edward 287 cyberwarfare 374 Czech Dawn-National Coalition 366 Czech Republic 128n7 Dacudao, Jose 291 Daesh (‘Islamic State of Syria and the Levant,’ ISIS) 127, 243, 326 Daily Express 149 Daily Mail 26, 149–150, 151–152, 271, 326 Daily Mirror 25, 27 The Daily Telegraph 23–24, 27, 149, 155 Dalrymple, William 299 Damra, Suzanne 246 Danczuk, Simon 152–153 Dark Ages 242 ‘Dark Web’ 376 data triangulation 49 Davis, D. A. 139 Dawkins, Richard 61 Day of Islam (Polish Catholic Church) 217, 221 Debray, Régis 114 A Decade Lost (Kundnani) 400 ‘de-Christianisation’ 126 “Declaration of Nostra Aetate” (Second Vatican Council 1965) 216 decline of masculinity 38 defensive hate crimes 73 defensive offenders 71 Deferre, Gaston 101 deflection strategies 317, 319, 322 de Graaf, M. 149–150 dehumanising discourses 141 Deindividuation Theory 73–74 deindustrialisation 33, 38 Delebarre, Michel 114 Delphy, Christine 112 demographic threats 125–126, 219 demonisation of outsiders 353 Denham, John 400

Index

DeSantis, A. 75 de-veiling campaigns (Algeria) 266–267 Dewinter, Filip 365, 367 “Dialogue and preaching” (Pontifical Council 1991) 216 digital communications 376; see also media Dimocratia newspaper (Greece) 202 ‘dinner table test’ 402 direct victims 94 discrimination: Dublin 138; Scotland 162, 167; UK 397–398 disenfranchised Muslims 336 disengagement and alienation 347 divide-and-rule approaches 288, 289 Doerre, P. 218 Dolan, K. 332 dominant groups ‘race’ denial 140 Domination Hate Model of Intercultural Relations (DHMIR) 47–48, 55 Draga Alexandru, M. S. 379–380 Dresden 366 drinking culture 304 ‘drip-drip’ negativity 392 ‘Drowning in Hate’ (Mediawatch) 269 drugs wars 292 Dublin 136, 138 Dunbar, E. 80 Dupain, Max: ‘Nuns at Newport Beach 1960’ 264; ‘The Sunbaker’ (1937) 264 Dutch models 124 Eatwell, Roger 359, 375, 380 Ebrahimji, M. 258 l’école laïque 267 economic globalisation and trade 366 economic impact 43 economic marginalisation 38 Edinburgh 161–162, 163, 164 educated Muslim women as terrorists 179 education: anti-Muslim hostility 138; ghettoised form of 103; Ireland 143; Scotland 167–168; US public schools 300; see also public pedagogy; universities educational institutions 175; see also Prevent policy (UK); universities Education for All Report 1985 (Swann Report) 178 Einashe, Ismail 346 Ekeroth, Kent 365 11 September 2001 attacks see 9/11 attacks elite racism 37 Ellinas, A. A. 376, 379 emergent norm theory 74–75 Emgage USA 13 emotional reactions 89 ENAR (European Network against Racism 131 Encouragement of Terrorism (Terrorism Act 2006, UK) 378

enforced vestimentary practices 127; see also Muslim women’s clothing England and Wales hate crimes 84, 355, 389 English Defence League (EDL) 36–37, 72, 353–354, 358–359, 376–379, 380, 381 English elite class structure 36 Enlightenment 45, 242 Environics poll (2006) 281 Environment of Hate (Ameli and Merali) 49, 50 Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) 401 Equality Authority (Ireland) 135 essentialization 243–244, 318, 327 ethnically-based hate crimes 355 ethnic and religious identities 387 ethnic cleansing 22 ethnicity: driving discriminatory attitudes 165; Jay Report 150 ethnic minorities 389; see also othering ‘ethno-pluralism’ 367 ethno-religious profiling 168 ‘Eurabia’ discourse (Ye’or) 126, 266 Eurobarometer 228 Europe: closed to Muslims 19; demographic patterns 219; dynamics of hostile attitudes 18; immigration and Islam as existential threats 364; Islamic terror (2007–2009) 327; loss of cultural identity 364; and ‘the Muslim problem’ 266; radical far right 363–370 ‘European Agenda on Migration’ (EC 2015) 231 European Commission (EC) 231 European Convention on Human Rights 388–389 European Court of Justice 129–130 European Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003 401 European Islamophobia Report 131 European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia 21, 353 European Muslim Initiative for Social Cohesion 12 European Muslim Research Centre (University of Exeter) 354 European Parliament 365 European societies 363–364, 369 European Union (EU): ‘European Agenda on Migration’ (EC 2015) 231–232; international migration and asylum 225; moral decay narrative 231; Poland attitude to 228–229, 230; Poland borrowing Islamophobic discourses 229; Poland opposition to refugees’ resettlement 215; radical right attitude to 367; refugee crisis 225 Europesimism 229 Europol 327 EU weak/Poland strong paradox 231 Ewart, J. 334 Examining Officers and Review Officers under Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000 (Home Office 2015) 343–344 413

Index

‘examining officer’ (Terrorism Act 2000) 343 Exécutif des Musulmans de Belgique (EMB) 124–125 ex-Muslims 395 The Experiences of Muslim Students in 2017–18 (NUS) 188, 190 The Experiences of Muslim Women in Education in 2017–18 (NUS) 188 ‘external-internal’ threats 365 external Islamophobia 45, 46 extreme groups 376, 378 extreme right 314 extremism 376–381, 404 Extremism and Intolerance on Campus report (1998) 178 Extremism Task Force report 2013 (UK) 404, 406 Facebook 374–382; calls to action 379; EDL outputs 376–378; ‘Isaan Says No to Mosque’ 293; online hate attacks 358 face veils see niqabs (face-veils) failing schools 44 failure to succeed 140 ‘Faith, Fashion, Fusion’ exhibition 265, 269, 270 Faith Matters 393 “faithwashing” 259 ‘fake news’ 374 Fallaci, Oriana 266 Fanon, F. 333, 336 Farage, Nigel 354 Farah, Mohamed 391 far-right groups 36–37; critics of Tell MAMA 394; ‘liberal’ Islamophobia 353; marketing extremism 376–381; online attacks 358–359 far-right Islamophobia 352–361; activism 36; mainstreaming 314–316, 352–355; rise of 314, 328 Faye, Guillaume 367 ‘fear’ 198–199 fear about Islam 200–203 fearing and saving Muslim women topos 220 Fear of Muslims? (Pratt and Woodlock) 357 Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) 180, 190 Feldman, M. 355, 360, 376, 380 female agency 112–113 Fernando, Mayanthi 107 Fidesz (Hungary) 369 Field, C. D. 27 Fielitz, M. 375 financial deregulation 33 Fine, Michelle 254, 301, 317, 319 Finsbury Park Mosque attack (2017) 38, 404 FitzGerald, M. 342 Flanders 124 Flemish Interest (VB) 365 ‘floating signifiers’ 327 414

#flyingwhilemuslim 342–343 ‘flying while Muslim’ 340 Fondation des œuvres de l’islam de France (FOIF) 114n9 football fan groups 387 Forgotten Women’ project (ENAR) 131 Forman, M. 301 For the Muslims (Plenel) 117–118 ‘Fortress Europe’ 366 Fortuyn, Pim 367 Fourest, Caroline 115, 116 France 110–119; anti-Muslim attacks 116; AntiNiqab Law 128, 267; anti-racist movement 110, 114; the beach in national culture 264; bikini as an icon 263; burkini affair 128n7; burkini ban 270–271, 370; citizenship for immigrants 101; colonial experience and racialized minorities 110; companies accommodating North African workers 99–100; full-face veil debate (2009–2010) 113; ideological Islamophobia 51; immigrant strikes (1982–1983) 101–102; interpersonal Islamophobia 51; ‘Islamophobia’ debate 105, 116–118; Islamophobic policy 52–55; law banning face coverings (2010) 114, 128, 267; law banning religious symbols in state schools (2004) 114, 267; law guaranteeing freedom of religion (1905) 104, 111; ‘Marianne’ (matriarch) 128, 270; ministry of immigration and integration 112; Ministry of the Interior circular (2006) 105; Muslim population 227; Muslim problem 110; ‘Muslim problem’ 116; Muslim women wearing veil 128; national identity debate (2009) 112; neo-liberal u-turn (1983) 102; North Africans migration 266; patterns of Islamophobia 55; preferential treatment of Muslims 105–106; ‘Republic in danger’ 115; social exclusion 266; terror attacks 116, 231; wearing religious symbols 74; see also laïcité (French secularism) France and the Hated Society (Ameli, Merali and Shahghasemi) 48 François, Myriam 44 Frankowski, Edward 217 freedom of speech 61, 64, 388 Freedom of Speech in Universities report (Joint Committee on Human Rights) 179 Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) 365 French Enlightenment 103 French exceptionalism 107 French Left: hostility towards Muslims 113–115; inherently ‘racist’ 111; and Islamophobia 118–119; ‘Muslim problem’ dividing the left 116–118; Muslims feel betrayed by 107 Frenkel-Brunswick, E. 80 Front National (FN) 99, 110, 365 Frost, C. 332

Index

Frost, D. 379 frustration-aggression 78 Fry, D. 376 Fuggle, Sophie 263–264 Fulford, Sir Adrian Bruce, Lord Justice 390 ‘fundamentalist’ stigmata 107 Furendi, F. 198 fused individuals 80 G4S 129 Gab social media 382 Gaffney, Frank 16 GALOP (LGBT) 392 Galvez-Marin, Yonatan 246 Garland, J. 73, 375 Garner, Steve 13 ‘gatekeepers’ 326 Gatineau (Canada) 282 gay Muslims 395 Gay, Vincent 102 Geens, Koen 126 Geller, Pamela 16, 65 gender and intensity of Islamophobia 53 gendered Islamic identity 21; see also hijabs (headscarves) gendered Islamophobia 123–132, 196 gendered liberal islamophobia 65 gendered patterns of policing 240 gender equality (l’égalite hommes-femmes) 112, 113; see also laïcité (French secularism) gender oppression 267 Geneva 265 Georgetown University 12 Gerin, André 114 Gérin report 267 Germany 230, 365–366 Getting the Message (Ameli, Mohseni Ahooei and Shaghasemi) 48 Gilliat-Ray, S. 399 Gilligan, Andrew 354 girls, sexual violence against 153–154 Giroux, H. 276 Giroux, H. A. 140, 141, 144 Glaser, J. 78 Glasgow 161–162 Glasgow Airport 163, 170 global stigmatization 303 The Globe and Mail 280 GMIP (Gerakan Mujahideen Islam Patani) 292 Goffman, Erving, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life 316–317 Goldberg, David Theo 61, 140, 327 Golden Dawn (GD) 201–202, 203, 204–205 Goldman, J. 278 Goncalves-Portelinha, I. 76 “good” and “bad” Muslim political subjectivities 256 good country/bad country binary 242

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim (Mamdani) 256 Google searches 14 Gość Niedzielny weekly paper 217 Gottschalk, Peter 12 Gough, H. 80, 81 Gowin, Jarosław 215 Gramsci, A. 277 Greater Manchester Police 150, 151, 152, 355 Greece 198–207; cultural and religious synthesis 201; evidence of Islamophobia 200; extreme right parties 202, 206; fear of Islamisation 201; human rights 206–207; Islam incompatible with Greek-Christian civilisation 205; mosque of Athens 203–204; Old and New Islam 200; Ottoman rule 199; racist attacks 200; rightwing discourse 206; and Turkey 204, 206 Greek Orthodox Church, Holy Synod 203–204 “Green” activism 257–260 Greenberg, Gabriel 12 Green, D. 78 Green Deen (Abdul-Matin) 258 “green Muslim” movement 257–258 Grenfell Tower fire (2017) 38, 39 Griffin, K. 76 Griffin, Nick 353 Grimm, J. 335–336 ‘grooming’ sexual abuse scandals 65, 148 Grosfoguel, Ramon 287 “Ground Zero mosque” protests 240 group-based discrimination 76 group formation 85 group identification 72, 76, 79, 81, 341 group norms 75 group publications 379 group socio-economic status 78–79 The Guardian 24–28, 299 Hafez, F. 314 Haider, Jörg 367 Hajjat Abdellali 110 halal slaughter 126 Hallard, Annelyse 106 Halliday, Fred 20, 59, 328 Hall, N. 375 Hall, S. 329 Hall, Stuart 291 Hamit, S. 76 Hammer, J. 307 Hamon, Benoît 118 Hanson, Pauline 268 harassment: airports 170; online abuse 195; student experience 193–194 Harper, Stephen 277 Harris, M. 399 Harris, Rolf 149 Harris, Sam 61, 67 Harvey, D. 139 415

Index

Hassanen, Nabra 246 Hate Crime Operational Guidance (College of Policing) 357, 389 Hate Crime Programme (UK 2007) 390 hate crimes: casual confrontations 47; defining 357, 389; destabilising individual’s sense of self 85; disparity of recording 389; election of Donald Trump 248; experiences of 86; geographical ‘hotspots’ 355; indirect effects 85; Ireland 143–144; male victims 246–248; message crimes 282–283; opportunistic 357, 358; perception 357; psychological factors predisposing individuals to 78–80; psychological implications 76–78; psychology of offenders 71–81; purposes 73; recording 355; under reporting 196; underreporting 359, 389, 392; restricting victim group 73; sectarian violence 394; as a special category 93; student experience 193; symbolic nature 85; UK 355–357, 389–390; USA 241; victims 357; women as victims 358; women in hijabs 245–246; young men committing 73; see also anti-Muslim hate crimes; Islamophobic hate crimes Hate Crime Strategy Board (UK) 390 hated society model of Islam 45–46 hate ideology 47, 48 hate representation 47 Hawkins, Larycia 302 Hayter Report (1961) 176 headscarf affair (Belgium) 126 headscarf affair (France 1989) 99, 112, 267; see also hijabs (headscarves) ‘heartland’ (Taggart) 365, 366 ‘Heart of the Nation’ advertisement (2007) 264–265 Heim, R. 80–81 Helly, D. 280 Hénin-Liétard (Hénin-Beaumont, France) 100 Hennette Vauchez, Stéphanie 112 Hepple, B., Tackling Religious Discrimination 399 Her Majesty’s Inspectorate Constabulary (UK) 151 Herouxville (Canada) 282 Hickman, M. J. 346 Hicks, Craig 302 High Council for Integration (HCI) 112 higher educational institutions 176; see also universities high-profile fundamentalists 107 hijabs (headscarves): backwardness of Muslim culture 290; banning in universities 113n6; bans at school 113, 129, 290–291; bans at workplace 129–130; bans in Belgium 127–128; bans in France 267; being torn off 137; controversy (2003–2004) 113; debates over wearing 112–115; discrimination in job interviews 166; ‘enslavement of women’ 115; gendered Islamic identity 21; hate crimes 245–246; as “offensive” 416

(Harper) 277; social stigma 320; students wearing 304; symbol of oppression 279, 391 ‘hijood’ 269 ‘hip hijabi’ 269 historical sexual abuse crimes 149 Hizb-ut-Tahrir (organisation) 178 Hollande, François 118 “homegrown terrorism” 253 homo economicus 35 homogeneous ‘people’ 364 homophobic hate crime 85 Honeyford Affair 32–33 Hopkins, Kris 403 Hopkins, Nick 341 Hopkins, P. 164, 171 ‘hotspots’ for hate crimes 355 Hourani, Albert 176 Hovland, C. 78 Hungary 233, 369 Huntington, Samuel 205, 367 Huq, Rupa 189 Hussain, A. 168 Hussein, S. 157, 264 Hutchison, P. 76, 81 Huysmans, J. 376 hybridised identities 317, 320 hyper-fertility 126 hyper-masculinity 37 hyper-visibility 164–165, 169 hyphenated identities 317 Ibrahim, Meriam 218 identity 336 identity and self-definition 342 identity denial 342 identity fusion theory 79–80 ideological-historical relationships 18 ideological Islamophobia 50, 51, 53 ideological motivations to violence and extremism 39 ideologies: cause of extremism 33; diametrically opposed 359; Islamophobia 200 ideology of hatred 47–48 iENGAGE (organisation) 403 Ieronymos, Archbishop of Athens 203 Iganski, P. 85 Ilaga Christian militia 289 illegitimate (‘terrorist’) organisations 331 illiberal Islamophobia 61, 62–63, 64, 66 ‘Imagine’ (Lennon) 106 Imbert, Claude 116 Immigrant Council of Ireland 136, 138 ‘immigrant question’ 102 immigrant strikes (1982–1983) 102 immigration: and African American Muslims 257; anti-utopian vision 364; to Europe and threat of Islamization 232; existential threat to Europe 364;

Index

Islamisation of Greece 202; third wave of Islamic expansion to the West 219 immigration bans 303, 369 immigration restrictions 368 impression management strategy 320 ‘i-Muslims’ (Blunt) 335 Independent Advisory Groups 391 Independent Greeks (ANEL) 203 Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham (Jay Report) 148–149, 150–151, 152 Independent Police Complaints Commission 151 Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) 357–358 Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation (UK) 343 India 288 indirect experience of victimisation 87–91, 94 individual identity 398 individual norms in large groups 74 inferiorisation 22 in-group solidarity 85 inherentism 23 Instagram 382 Institute for Market and Social Research (IBRIS) 225 Institute for Social Policy and Understanding 240 institutional discrimination 165, 178 institutionalised Islamophobia 178, 189 institutionalized racism 178 institutional mistrust 170 institutional responses to Islamophobia 194–195 “insurrectionary acts” (Butler) 301 integration 34 intensity of Islamophobia 53–54 intercultural dialogue 55, 258 inter-cultural fear 255 interfaith dialogue 255, 258 “interfaith industry” 256 interfaith movement 254–257, 258 interfaith student groups 255–256, 258–259 interfaith volunteerism 257–258 interfaith youth programs 254, 259 intergroup emotions theory (IET) 85–86 International Humanist and Ethical Union 395 international migration 225 international students 303 internet 39, 45 interpersonal Islamophobia 50, 51 inter-racial solidarity 256–257 interreligious dialogue topos 220 ‘intuition’ (‘thick professionalism’) 345 invocations of ‘God’ 101 Ipsos index of ignorance 227–228 Iraq war 74 Ireland 135–144; ‘anti-Muslim’ crime recording 139; anti-Muslim racism 137–138; antiracism/ diversity policies 139; ‘austerity’ and public expenditure cuts 135; challenging anti-Muslim

racism 140, 141–142; counter-terror measures 346; discrimination in education 143; gendered hostility 137; hate crime legislation 143–144; media anti-Muslim agenda 142; Muslim ethnonational backgrounds 136; neoliberal racial state 139–140, 144; physical abuse 137; ‘public pedagogy’ 140; studies 135–137 “irrational fears” 14 Irshad, G. 299 ‘Isaan Says No to Mosque’ (Facebook page) 293 ISIS (Daesh) 127, 243, 326 Islam: Academic interest 176; as an alien monolith 34; attitude surveys 25; common nouns associated with 316; conflicts with Western values 314; as the ‘enemy’ 291; existential threat to Europe 364; identity shelter 266; incompatible with Greek-Christian civilisation 205; as inferior to Christianity 205; and ‘Islamism’ 28; as an Other 61; pre-and postWest 35; representation in the media 315–316, 333; and terrorism 205, 327; threat and a frightening enemy 198; as a violent religion 28, 205, 244–245, 316 ‘Islam des caves’ (‘Cellar Islam’) 101 Islamic Centre of Quebec terrorist attack (2017) 275 Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) 48 Islamic Networks Group (ING) 255 Islamic student societies (ISocs) 178, 179, 181, 193 Islamic terror in Europe (2007–2009) 327 Islamisation: ‘de-Christianisation’ 126; Europe 36–37, 215, 219, 229; Greece 200–203; Poland 227; United Kingdom 36–37 Islamism 39 Islamist fundamentalism 199 ‘Islamist Terrorism’ 27–28 ‘Islamist totalitarianism’ (Valls) 115 Islamist violence 380 Islamo-gauchistes (Islamo-leftists) 115 Islamophobia: as anti-Arab racism 106; as “antiMuslim prejudice” 12, 14; anti-Muslim racism 36, 59–60; as articulations 61–62; characteristics 60; as “close-mindedness” 12; colour-coded 37; as a construct 61; context and opportunity 38; criticism of term 20; defining 7, 11–16, 59–61, 199–200, 287, 328, 397; excused by a medical phobia 388; exploited by ‘Islamists and Wahhabis’ 402; “fear laden discourse” 12; Google searches 14; hyper-normalisation 35–38; ideology and activism 200; Multilateral Model 45–47; Old World and New World encounters 239; origins 13, 19, 286–287; personal problem based in fear 307; political use 23–24, 46; prejudice against Muslims 15; racism in scholarship 239; roots in European societies 363–364; social construct 363; sociopsychological phenomenon 175; typologies 44–45, 200; see also anti-Muslim hate 417

Index

Islamophobia Awareness Month (2017) 190 Islamophobia industry 40 “Islamophobia is Racism” syllabus 306 Islamophobia (Runnymede Trust 2017) 60 Islamophobia (Runnymede Trust/CBMI 1997) 12, 19–20, 60, 61, 198, 287, 328, 352–353, 397, 398–399, 405 ‘Islamophobia without Muslims’ 227 Islamophobic hate crimes 84–94, 357–361; attitudes towards policing 91; behavioural impacts 90–91; criminal justice system 91–94; experiences of hate crimes 86–87; group publications on Facebook 379; impacts 88–89; indirect experiences 87–88; mosques 283; reactions to 84–85; see also anti-Muslim hate crimes; hate crimes Islamophobic hate groups 283 Islamophobic ideas 241 ‘Islamophobic’ incidents 357 Islamophobic policy 52–55 ‘Islamophobic studies’ 38 “Islamophobie” 13, 287 ‘L’islamophobie se porte bien en Australie’ (Libération) 268 ‘Islamoprejudice’ (Pratt and Woodlock) 357 Islamoromia 55 Ismael, T. Y. 279–280 ISoc speaker events 181 Israel 365 Israeli-Arab passengers 342 Israeli-Jewish passengers 342 Israel–Palestine “apartheid and occupation” 259 ‘Issues of Ethnicity’ (Jay Report) 150 Istanbul 385–386 Italy 389 ITV News 151 Jabara, Khalid 247 Jabidah Massacre (1972) 289 Jakubowicz, Alain 116 Jama, Asma 245 Jamieson, L. 163, 166, 167, 168 Janner, Greville Ewan, Baron Janner of Braunstone 403 Jaurès, Jean 107 Jawi (language) 292, 293 Jay, Alexis, Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham (Jay Report) 148–149, 150–151, 152 Jędraszewski, Marek, Archbishop of Kraków 212 Je suis Charlie’ movement 58, 116 Jewish communities 43–44, 390, 392 jihadi Islamist extremism 360–361 ‘jihadis’ 37 Jihad Watch 65 Jobanuptra, N. 74 John Paul II, Pope (Karol Wojtyła) 216, 217 418

Joint Committee on Human Rights, Freedom of Speech in Universities report 179 Jones, Alan 269 Jones, C. 154 journalism 325–337; anti-Muslim bias 23–25; combating racism and prejudicial reporting 331–332; framing the story 330; lazy 380, 391; objectivity 330, 332; post 9/11 328–333; practical/vocational based 334; problematising and misunderstanding minority cultures 329; racist discourses 332; reflective/critical training 334–335; representation of Islam/Muslims 333–334; ‘white’-dominated profession 333; see also media Judenhass (Jew hatred) 22 judeophobie 13; see also anti-Semitism Jyllands-Posten (newspaper) 64 Kaczyński, Jarosław 230 Kallis, Aristotle 358 Kamali, P. 76 Karim, K. H. 327, 328 Katz, E. 379 Kayson, W. 75 Kelly, J. 314 Kepel, Gilles 117 Khalid, Iqra 284 Khamis, Susie 265 Khanam, Nazma 246 Khan, F. 346 Khan, N. 76 Khon Kaen (Thailand) 293 Kick it Out (organisation) 392 Kidd, S. 163, 166, 167, 168 Killian, L. 74 King’s College London 189 ‘kiss-and-fly’ point airports 344 kosher slaughter 126 Kranidiotis, Failos 202 Kuchibhotla, Srinivas 247 Kumar, Deepa 157, 253 Kundnani, A. 44, 313–314, 315; A Decade Lost 400 Kurti, Peter 270 Kurzman, Charles 249 Kyriakides, C. 164 Laa Laa, Mecca 265 La laïcité en face (Valls) 114 laïcité (French secularism) 99–107; 1960s–1980s 100–104; ban on veils 128; Belgium 124, 129; contemporary constructions 107; controlling Maghrebi immigrants 267; defining 111; dominant right-wing interpretation 112; francophone Belgium 129; French constitution 74; French thinking 105; gender equality 112, 113; Muslims not respecting 219; opposition to ‘Anglo-Saxon models’ 112; ostentatious

Index

demonstration of religious beliefs 105; prayer room facilities 100; regulation of religious clothing 266–267; safeguarding 111; showing religiosity in public 112; use of term 102; White backlash narratives 104–107; see also France; secularism laïcité identitaire 112 ‘laïcité juridique’ 105 Laird, L. 301 Lambie, Jacquie 268 land grabbing 289 Las Vegas shootings (2017) 327 Latham, J. D. 177 Latinos 257, 299 Law and Justice Party (PiS) 214, 226, 228 law enforcement officers 304 lazy journalism 380, 391; see also journalism Lean, Nathan 116 learning languages 177 lecturers reporting opinions 191 Lee, B. 379 Leeds football fans 385–386 ‘left behind’ 34 Lega Nord 365, 366 legitimate political resistance 33 legitimate “vocabulary” 180 Leicester University, Centre for Hate Studies 354 Leitch, Kellie 278 Lennon, John 106 Lens-Liévin (France) 100 Leon, J. 76 Le Pen, Jean-Marie 102, 367 Le Pen, Marine 16, 110, 263 Lesvos (Greece) 202 Levin, Brian 248 Levin, J. 71, 72, 81 Levinson, D. 80 Lewis, Bernard 239 Lewis, Reina 268 LGBT 194, 231, 395 liberal interfaith coalitions 255–256 liberal interfaith politics 254–255 “liberal Islam” 218 liberal Islamophobia 61, 62, 63–65, 66, 353 liberalism 366 liberal multiculturalism 255 liberal rights and universalism 66 liberals and liberal institutions 157 liberal social movements 66 Libération 101; ‘L’islamophobie se porte bien en Australie’ 268 LICRA (International League against Racism and Antisemitism 116 Liow, Joseph 292 Littler, M. 355, 360, 376, 380 ‘living together’ in society (vivre-ensemble) 104

Loi contre la dissimulation du visage (Anti-Niqab law, France) 128, 267 Londonistan (Phillips) 354 ‘long-skirt affair’ (2015) 128–129 Lopez, Fernando Bravo 13 Lorette (France) 265 “loud Muslims” 305 Lubbers, M. 314 Lubna, S. 76 Lucassen, G. 314 Lycée Averroès (Lille) 106 Maalbeek metro station attack (2016) 127 Ma Ba Tha (extremist Buddhist group) 294 ‘machinery of representation’ see media Mackenzie, Kelvin 357–358 Macklin, G. 375, 380 Maclean’s magazine 281 Macpherson Inquiry 150 macro-level aggressions 313 MacShane, Denis 299 Madasani, Alok 247 Madon, N. S. 341 Maghrebins (North Africans) 100–101, 266 Maha Apichat 294 Maher, Bill 61, 64–65, 67 ‘mainstreaming of Islamophobia’ 148, 358 mainstream media: anti-Muslim media content 379–380; disenfranchised Muslims 336; Islamist violence 380; post-9/11 growth of Islamophobia 379; sources sharing by far-right groups 381; unchallenged discourses 316; see also media; newspapers Maira, S. 301 Mair, Thomas 380 Malay Muslims: as guests (khaek) 293; ‘non-Thai’ qualities 293; policies against 292; sultanates 291; Thai-medium primary schools 291; violence against leaders 292–293; see also Thailand male power 153–154 Malik, Samina 179 Mamasapano incident (Philippines) 291 Mamdani, Mahmood 243, 258; Good Muslim, Bad Muslim 256 managerial note (1962) 100 Manchester Arena attack (2017) 71, 393 ‘Manifesto for Germany’ (AfD) 369 Manina (film) 263 Manji, Fatima 357–358 ‘Marche pour l’égalité et contre le racisme’ (‘Marche des Beurs’ 1983) 101 Marcos, Ferdinand 289 Marcus-Newhall, A. 75 marginalised groups 73, 306 ‘Marianne’ (French matriarch) 128, 270 marketing extremism 376 419

Index

Marois, Pauline 278–279 ‘Marxist zealots’ (calotins marxistes) 102 Marx, Karl 15 mass shootings 327 Mattei, R. 220 Matthes, J. 316 Mauroy, Pierre 102 May, Theresa 404, 406 McDevitt, J. 71, 72, 73, 78, 81 McDevitt, Jack 245 McGovern, M. 181 McKernan, B. 326 McLoughlin, S. 399 Measor, J. 279–280 media 325–337; anti-Muslim agenda 142; antiMuslim bias 23–25; anti-Muslim content 381; creating associations of ‘race,’ culture, and religion 330; ‘elite’ in society 329; extremist discourses 376; ‘machinery of representation’ 329; mediating and framing news coverage 361; negative representations 242–243; non-mainstream views 376; perpetuating Islamophobia 291; political discourses 316; portrayals of Muslims 193, 354; positive representations 268, 381; PR campaigns 331; and public pedagogy 142; refocussing coverage of Muslims 380–381; relationship with Islamophobia 43; reporting French burkini ban 270–271; representation of Islam and Muslims 315–316, 333; representation of minority groups 325; stimulating white news production 331; see also journalism; mainstream media; newspapers Mediapart 117 media platforms 189 ‘media students’ 336 Mediawatch, ‘Drowning in Hate’ 269 Meer, N. 327 Meer, Nasar 59–60 Meniri, Mohamed 107 Merali, A. 48–49, 50, 282 ‘merchants of morality’ (Goffman) 321 message crimes 282–283; see also hate crimes Metropolitan Police 93–94, 149, 152 MI5 report (2008) 315 microaggressions 76–78, 313 Middle East politics 258–259 Midwestern airport 342 Międlar, Jacek 215 Mielants, Eric 287 Miles, Robert 20–21, 327 military industrial complex 43 Miller, W. 168 Mills, T. 330 minaret ban (Switzerland 2009) 370 Mindanao (Philippines) 289 420

minorities: BBC and minority sensitivities 28; group-based discrimination 76; journalists problematising and misunderstanding 329; over-policed and under-protected 150; “structural disadvantages” 177 minority conditionality 44 Mir, Shabana 301, 305; Muslim American Women on Campus 303–304 ‘mission offenders’ 71–72 Mitterrand, François 101 MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) 80 mocking Muslims 25 moderate Muslim identity 256 moderate Muslim students 184 modern philosophy 45 ‘modest fashion’ 268–270; see also burkinis Modood, Tariq 22, 59–60, 177 modular instant Islamophobia 45 Moghahed, Dalia 240 Mohammed, Marwan 110 Mohseni Ahooei, E. 48 Molenbeek (Brussels) 126 A Momentous Occasion (Allen) 403 Le Monde 102, 268 Mondon, A. 64, 66, 314 Monis, Man Haron 361 monocultural Britishness 315 mono-ethnic religious groups 398 moral decay narrative 231 moral panic 199, 253, 368 moral panics 265–266 Morawiecki, Mateusz 220 Moreland Sentinel 268 Morel, Omar 247 Moro Islamic Liberation Front 290 Moros (Filipino Muslims) 288–290; see also Philippines Moro Wars (Philippines) 288 mosques: Athens 203–204; attacks in US 241; as “hotbed of radicalism” 283; post-Trump election attacks 247–248; Thailand 293; UK 401 Motchane, Didier 114 Mother Jones 241, 299 Movement Against Racism, Antisemitism and Xenophobia (MRAX) 130 MPAC Hate Crime Dash Board 94n10 MRAP (Movement against Racism and for Friendship among Peoples) 116 Mudde, Cas 364 Mu Delta Alpha (Muslim sorority) 306 Mughal, Fiyaz 393, 394 Muhammad, Marwan 107 Muir, S. 300 multicultural identity politics 260 multiculturalism 26, 34, 36, 201 multicultural liberal democracies 267

Index

Multidimensional Model of Understanding Islamophobia (MMUI) 44, 55 multi-ethnic religious groups 398 multi-faithism 255 Multilateral Model of Islamophobia 45–47 Muncer, S. 74 Murphy, K. 341 Murray, Douglas 18–19, 354, 364 muscular secular liberalism 35 ‘Muslim advocates’ (‘gatekeepers’) 326 Muslim Advocates (organisation) 13 ‘Muslim airport stories’ 169, 341 Muslim American identity 306 Muslim Americans 76–78, 253–257, 258 Muslim American Women on Campus (Mir) 303–304 Muslim American youth 253, 257 #MuslimApologies 335 Muslim/Arab-Japanese American solidarity 260–261 Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) 326, 331, 336 Muslim Council of Britain 346, 399 Muslim customs 100–101 Muslim East Asian high school students 301 Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) 326, 330–331, 336 Muslim grooming gangs 355 Muslim hyper-visibility 164–165, 169 Muslim identity: Islamophobia destroying 85; Mu Delta Alpha 306; ‘politicizing’ 178; selfdissociation 23; understanding in different contexts 300–301; ‘voluntary segregation’ 91 Muslim insurgencies 286, 289–290, 292 Muslim males: othering 156–157; rates of hostility against 137; “Special Registration Program” (USA) 253 Muslimness: and Arabness 260; visible markers 164–165 Muslim online presence 335–336 Muslim-only spaces 193 Muslim ‘other’ 314; see also othering Muslim parents 181 ‘Muslim problem’ 116, 266 Muslim Public Affairs Council 254 ‘Muslim question’ 102 “The Muslim Question” (Alexander) 60 Muslim rebel groups 292 Muslim Rights Belgium (MRB) 123, 131 Muslims: birth rates 39; challenges 394–395; chosen beliefs 23; common nouns associated with 316; conflict with Western values 314; converting to Christianity 218; and crime 327; defined by religion 34; demands to reform 44; economically disadvantaged 188; ‘enemies within’ 328; ethnic minorities 389; as ‘fifth column’ (Farage) 354; immigrants and culturally alien 364; least popular religious community 401; mass shootings in the USA

327; multi-ethnic religious groups 398; negative representations 242–243, 316, 331; perceptions of today and historically 22; quest for public space 204; reassuring after terrorist attacks 393; representation in the media 315–316, 333; responses to counter-terrorism 346; separation from non-Muslims 46; as social aliens 169; as a threat 198; tolerant approaches 101; uncivilised 205; as victims/oppressors 25; against western way of life 206 Muslims and the Law in Multi-Faith Britain (UKACIA) 398 ‘Muslim scare stories’ 330 Muslim students 175–185; avoiding topics for research 183; being called terrorists 179; Islamophobic incidents 179–180, 182–183; legitimate “vocabulary” 180; narratives of suspicion 179–180; NUS survey 179, 188–195; political disengagement 192–193; Prevent duty 179; representing Islam 304; students’ unions 189; survey 188; as terrorists 178–179; see also Prevent policy (UK); students Muslim Students’ Survey 190 Muslim travel bans 58–59, 276, 302–303, 343, 346 Muslim Welfare Centre attack (London 2017) 59 Muslim women: attacks on 241; attacks on in Islamic dress 66–67; Belgium 123, 127–131; discrimination 53–54; emancipating from Taliban 65; fear of being attacked 193–194; misrepresentation through Islamophobic labelling 43; ‘modest fashion’ 269; narratives of suspicion 180; ‘othering’ 129, 131; patterns of discrimination 189; pay gap 189; physical abuse 137; in prisons 189; rate of hostility against 137; socio-economically marginalised 266; swimming 269; as terrorists 179; unemployment 189; victims of hate crimes 358, 391; as victims of oppressive Muslim men 220; visibly identifiable 195, 196 Muslim women’s clothing: as a cultural threat 127; French regulation 266–268; secularism (laïcité) 129; see also burkinis; hijabs (headscarves) Muslim youth 54–55, 301 Myanmar 288, 294 ‘My Dress, My Image, My Choice’ (fashion event) 268–269 Mythen, G. 346 Nabi, S. 178 Nadal, K. 76, 77, 81 Naeem, Halim 300 Al Nahdi, Hussein Saeed 247 Narkowicz, K. 220 narrative of threat 125–127 narratives of suspicion 180–184 National Action 72 national belonging 164–165 421

Index

National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism (NCCRI, Ireland) 135 National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) 282 National Crime Agency (NCA) 149 National Front 358 National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) 149 National Post 280 National Union of Journalists (NUJ) 333 National Union of Students (NUS) 179, 188, 192, 194–195 Nayak, A. 327 negative media representations 242–243; see also media negative stereotypes 316 negotiation strategy 317, 318–319 Neiwert, D. 379 neoliberal governmentality 257–258 neoliberal racial states 139–140, 144 neoliberal society 140 neo-Orientalist representations 300–301 Netherlands 369 ‘New Atheist’ movement 61 New Democracy party 206 New Labour government (UK) 399–402, 404, 405 new media 43, 335; see also social media The New Muslims (Runnymede Trust 2013) 60 ‘new racism’ (Balibar) 62 ‘The New Right’ (Greece) 202 News Corp 381 newspapers: coverage of Islam and Muslims 331; ‘otherness’ of Muslims/Islam 328–329; reporting the Rotherham child abuse scandal 150, 152; see also mainstream media; media Newsweek 299 Nice 271; burkini ban (2016) 370; terror attack (2016) 357–358 Nice-Matin 271 Nickels, H. C. 346 Niedziela weekly paper 217 Nikolopoulos, Christos 202 9/11 attacks 1; backlash for Britain’s Muslim 353; effect on UK hate crime 386–387; intensifying Islamophobia 239–240; Islamophobic incidents in UK 399–400; Muslim students as “would be” terrorists 178; non-Western films 43; and the radical right 367–368; religious identities 301; rise in prejudice 21; UK government response 34–35; ‘war on terror’ 33; see also post-9/11 era “9/11 generation” 252 969 Movement 294 1990 Trust 336 niqabs (face-veils): backwardness of Muslim culture 290; ban in Belgium 127–128; ban in France 128, 267; ban in Quebec 283; barrier to integration 406; debate in France 113, 267; 422

legitimacy wearing 26; ripped off 189; see also burqas; veiling Noelle, M. 85 non-Christian religious minorities 22 non-mainstream views 376 non-violent harassment 248 non-Western films 43 normalisation of anti-Muslim sentiments/ Islamophobia 35–38, 314, 369 North Africans (Maghrebins) 99–101, 266 ‘northern disturbances’ (Bradford, Oldham and Burnley) 34–35 Nos mals-aimés (Askolovitch) 117 Not in My Name campaign 331 Nour al Houda Islamic College 269 nouvelle laïcité 112 Le Nouvel Observateur 103 Novak, T. 154 ‘Nuns at Newport Beach 1960’ (Dupain) 264 NUS Black Students Campaign 188 NUS Muslim representatives 195 NUS survey (2018) 179 NUS Women’s Campaign 188 Nuttall, Paul 354 NYPD 303 Obama, Barack 240, 253, 335 Obono, Danièle 118 Observatoire de la laïcité 111–112 Obsession (film) 14, 240 ‘des occasions manquées’ (missed chances) 107 Occidentophobia 32, 35 O’Donnell, A. 180, 182 Old and New Islam 200 Oldham racist acts (UK 2001) 386 Oliver, Margaret 151 Once Upon a Hatred (Ameli, Mohseni Ahooei and Merali) 48 online abuse 87, 147, 195, 196; see also social media online attacks 358–359 online far-right communities 376 Only Canadian (Ameli and Merali) 48–49 Ontario Muslims 282 Open Society Foundations 136, 138 “Operation Green Quest” 304 Operation Hydrant (NPCC) 149 Operation Stovewood (NCA) 149 Operation Yewtree (Metropolitan Police) 149, 152 opinion leadership 379 opportunistic attacks 358 Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) 389 Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) 395 Oriel, Jennifer 271 Oriental and Area studies 176–177 Orientalism 18, 37

Index

Orientalist inspired narratives 127 Ormston, R. 166 Orthodox Church of Greece 202–203 Osborne, Darren 38, 380 Osbourne, Darren 59 Osmane, Maged 107 othering: in films and social media 299; ‘Muslim’ and ‘Islam’ 61; and Muslim males 156–157; Muslims and Islamic practices 125, 328–329; and Muslim women 129, 131; Philippines 290–291; Poland 221; Thai Muslims 293; veil as stigma symbol 318 Ottoman rule 199 Oufkir, Hassane 106 out-groups 48, 81 overseas Muslim students 177 Oxford English Dictionary 395 Palace of Westminster attack (2017) 387–388 Palestinian national identity 259 Palestinian/pan-Arab nationalism 260 Palmer, Keith 387 Panhellenic Union of Theologians 203 pan-Islamic universalism 255 Pardy, Maree 270 Parekh, B. 25 parents monitoring children 180–181 Paris attacks (January 2015) see Charlie Hebdo attack (Paris 2015) Paris attacks (November 2015) 66, 244, 326, 376–378, 379 Park51 Islamic Cultural Center (New York) 14 Parker Report (1986) 176, 177 Parti Socialiste (PS) 114 Party for Freedom (PVV) 365; manifesto (2017) 369 Pasig City (Philippines) 290 ‘passers’ (passing as non-Muslim) 78 passport control 344 Patel, Harnish 247 patriarchal approaches 53 Peace, Timothy 105, 107 Pearson, Allison 149 Pędziwiatr, K. 220 PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West) 65, 279, 365, 366 perceived threats 88 ‘performances of safety’ 346 ‘performing normalcy’ 317 “permission to hate” 279 Perros, P. 374 Perry, B. 142, 280, 282 personal identity 79 Pew Global Attitudes and Trends (2016) 18 Pew Research Center 241, 300, 336 Pew research public opinion polls 240 Phibun Songkhram 291–292

Philippines 288–291; American policies 289; bias against Muslims 289; Christian militia 289; hijab ban 290–291; identity cards 290; martial law (1972) 289–290; media Islamophobic discourses 291; migration of Catholics 289; Muslim insurgencies 286, 289–290; Spanish conquest 288–289; see also Moros (Filipino Muslims) Phillips, Melanie 28, 266, 354; Londonistan 354 “phobia” 14, 357 phone interactions 166 Phra Maha Apichat Punnajanto 293–294 physical assaults 87 Pieronek, Tadeusz 212 Pilar College (Philippines) 290 Pina, Céline 115 planes, removal from 343 Plenel, Edwy, For the Muslims 117–118 pluralism 255 Poland 212–221, 225–234; anti-migration, antirefugee narrative 232; attitude to EU 228–229, 230–232; Catholicism and nationalism 215; Catholic press 217–220; democracy 226; EU-proposed relocation and resettlement 215; EU weak/Poland strong paradox 231; fear of Islam 220–221; general elections (2015) 226; “good change” slogan 214; guardian of Christian Europe 220; hostility to refugees 225, 232, 321; ignorance of Muslim population 228; Independence Day rally (2017) 216; influence of ‘think tanks’ 230; inventing negative stereotypes 227–228; Ipsos study (2016) 227–228; Islam and Muslims as threat to nation 215; Islamophobia 229–230; Islamophobia and national identity 226, 230; ‘Islamophobia without Muslims’ 227; malcontent towards “others” 212–213; marginalized in EU 233; mosques 229; Muslim population 227; net emigration state 233; “no” to Islamisation of Europe mantra 215; ‘platonic’ Islamophobia 226; as rebellious periphery of EU 226; “Rosary to the Borders” 212, 213; sovereignty and subjectivity 229; Tatars (Muslim autochthonous minority) 227; victimhoodbased identity 230 Polexit 225, 228, 233 police failings 151, 153 policing: British ‘Asian males’ 150; challenges 385–395; community encounters 342; confidence in 91–93, 348; future crimes 315; gendered patterns 240; racist football supporters 386; stops and searches 168, 344 Polish Catholic Church 213–216; activism 214; attitudes towards Islam 217; Day of Islam 217, 221; influence 213–214; not dispelling misconceptions 221; official position on Islam and Muslims 216–217; political alliance with PiS 214–215; see also Catholic Church 423

Index

Polish Episcopal Conference 212, 214 political censorship 257–260 political correctness 33 political disengagement 192–193 political fear 199 political marketing 379 political repression 253 La politique musulamen dans l’Afrique Occidentale (Quellien) 286 Politis 103 Pollokshields (Scotland) 163 Polonia Christiana 217, 219 pondoks (Islamic boarding schools) 292 Pontifical Council for International Dialogue, “Dialogue and preaching” (1991) 216 Poole, Elizabeth 326 Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) 201, 203 populism 33, 364 Portugal 287–288 positive news stories 391 post-9/11 era 252–261; anti-Muslim stereotypes 280; Arab Muslim experiences 240; civil rights activism 253–254; discrimination in Scotland 162–164; hate crimes 240; institutional mistrust 170; interfaith movement 255; journalistic responses 328–333; ‘normalised’ anti-Muslim prejudice 357; radical right 367–368; see also 9/11 attacks post-1945 liberalism 366 post-apocalyptic writing 364 post-First World War order 367 post-truth post-normal world 34 postwar liberal globalist/post-sovereigntist utopia 367 postwar liberalism 366–367 Potvin, M. 280 Powell, Enoch 105 Powerhouse Museum (Sydney) 265, 269 Poynting, S. 157, 264 Prague Declaration (2016) 366 Pratt, Douglas, Fear of Muslims? 357 prayer room facilities, French secularism 100 PR campaigns 331 preferential treatment 105–106 Prejudice Scale (Gough) 80 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Goffman) 316–317 Press Complaints Commission (PCC, UK) 332 press coverage 391; see also media; newspapers Prevent policy (UK): counter terrorism strategy 175; culture of surveillance 183; effect on ISocs 181; experiences of 182–183; fear of being reported 192; impact on civic life 192; intellectual debates 181; Muslim student engagement 179, 191–192, 196; reporting signs of radicalisation 179, 190–191, 315; reporting signs of vulnerability 179, 180–181, 182; 424

students engaging in politicised student life 193; trust of institutions 196; see also Muslim students; universities ‘primary definers’ (Van Dijk) 329 privatized “faith-based initiatives” 256 pro-action behavioural impacts 90 Pro-Cologne movement 365 professional careers 305 Prophet Mohammed cartoons 64 ‘Prophet Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest’ exhibition (Texas) 65 Prophet of Islam-Mohammadophobia 42 “Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Entry into the United States” (Executive Order January 2017) 67, 244, 248 pro-violent messaging 379 ‘psychic alienation’ 180 psychological issues: disorders 80–81; and hate crimes 78–80; hate crime victims 76–78, 300 public humiliation 342 public pedagogy 140–141, 142, 143; see also education ‘public space’ 104 ‘Punish a Muslim Day’ flyers 189 Quebec 275–284; Bill 62 banning the niqab 283; challenges to Muslim identity 278; Islamophobic hate groups 283; media’s negative constructs of Islam 280; radio poubelle 280; right wing extremist groups 279; surveys 281; terrorist attack (2017) 275; “xenophobia, racism, exclusion” 283 Quebec Muslims 282 Quellien, Alain, La politique musulamen dans l’Afrique Occidentale 286 Quezon, Manuel 289 Quilliam Foundation 402 race: disappeared from the agenda 36; privatising issues 140; and racial difference 327 ‘race’ and ‘racism’ (Miles) 327 ‘race’ denial 140 Race for Justice Declaration 395 Race Relations (Banton) 20 ‘racial articulations’ (Miles) 21 racialisation 18–29; background 20–21; biological racism 22–23; cultural racism 22–23; inherentism 23; media contributing to 27; non-Christian religious minorities 22; and religion 22 racism: biological inferences 22–23; combining religion, class, nation 327; and ‘culturalism’ 22–23; essentialization 243; institutionalised 37; Islamophobia 60; narrow definition 23; new forms 326; and racialism 36; social dynamics 21; state intervention 140; traditional forms 326; understanding differences in society 36

Index

Racism report (NUS) 189 racist crimes 387 racist discourses 66, 332 ‘racist media coverage’ 355–356 racist-nationalist patriarchal discourses 66 racist stereotyping 22 Racist Violence Recording Network 200n3 Radford, J. 153–154 radicalisation: and Islamophobia 39; moral panic 258; rooted in Islam 315; on university campuses 179; see also attitudinal changes radical right 363–370; anti-elite/-establishment discourse 368; attitude to the EU 367; defining 364–365; hostility to Islam 363; 9/11 attacks 367–368; scapegoating Islam 368; utopia 369–370 Radio Poubelle 279–280 Rafiq, U. 74 Rai, Deep 247 Rajina, F. 43–44 Ramadan celebrations 270 Ramasubramanian, S. 381 Rana, J. 22 RAND Europe 336 ‘rape epidemic’ (Waters) 65 Ratcliffe, P. 400 Real Time 67 Reasonable Accommodation debates 278 Reay Report (1909) 176 Reese, S. D. 330 Reform party (Canada) 277 refugee crisis 202, 225, 231–232 Reicher, Stephen 341 Reid, John 406 Reisigl, M. 24 religion: as criteria for stopping people 344; critique of state institutions 37; defining Islamophobia 60–61; driving discriminatory attitudes 165; educative journalism 26; ‘floating signifier’ 327; individual and corporate identity 398; linking to terrorism 47; non-problematic identity 100; protection against discrimination 401; and racialisation 21; role 25–27; social discrimination 43 Religion or Belief (Woodhead) 401 religious and ethnic identities 387 religious clothing 266–267 religious discrimination 19, 398, 399 Religious Discrimination in England and Wales (Weller) 399 religious freedom 104, 388 religious hate crime data 390 religiously aggravated offences (Scotland) 164 religious multiculturalism 255, 256 religious nationalism 288 religious panic 202n16, 203 religious persecution 22

religious symbols 74, 278 repeat victimisation 86 reporting Islamophobic incidents 194, 359 ‘Report of the Independent Advisory Group on Hate Crime, Prejudice and Community Cohesion’ (Scottish government) 357 Republican Spring (Printemps républicain) 116 ‘Republic in danger’ 115 research literature 300–301 ‘resentful autochthony’ 99, 105 resistance 306–307 resistance strategy 317, 321–322 ‘respectable identities’ 169 retaliation 90 retaliatory hate crimes 73 retaliatory offenders 71 revenge attacks 375 Rich, A. 78 Richardson, J. E. 331 Riddell, S. 401 Rigby, Lee 359, 360, 387–388, 404 right-wing populism 364 right-wing think tanks 330 right-wing US discourse 304 Riposte laïque (website) 118 ‘ripple effect’ (Noelle) 85 ritual slaughter 126 Rivera, D. 76 Robbin Report (1963) 177–178 Roberts, C. 375 Robinson, Tommy 37 Rochdale Council 155 Rohingyas 294 “Rosary to the Borders” 212, 213 Rosie, M. 162 Rossignol, Laurence 115 Rotherham and Rochdale child sexual abuse scandal 147–157; background 148–149; far right anti-Muslim activism 65; impact on Muslim community 155–156; media and ethnic dimension 149–151; racial tensions 155; representations of white sex offenders 151–154; role of UKIP 355; violent Islamophobia 156; white-European victims 66 Roy, Olivier 111, 114, 117, 315 Runnymede Trust: Islamophobia (1997) 12, 19–20, 60, 61, 198, 287, 328, 352–353, 397, 398–399, 405; Islamophobia (2017) 60; The New Muslims (2013) 60 Rushdie, Salman, The Satanic Verses 28, 33, 64, 103, 178, 313–314, 398 Ryś, Grzegorz 217 Saadallah, Bouchra 131 sabbatical officers 189 Sabeel group 260 Saeed, A. 329 425

Index

“safe spaces” 181 Said, Edward 176, 242, 287 Salaita, Steven 260 Saleem, M. 381 Salvini, Matteo 369 ‘sameness’ of Muslims and non-Muslims 143 San Bernardino shooting (2015) 302 Sanford, R. 80 San Francisco Bay Area 257 Sardar, Ziaudin 26 Sarkozy, Nicolas 112, 267, 270 Sarroub, L. K. 300; All American Yemeni Girls 301 Sassen, S. 303 The Satanic Verses (Rushdie) 28, 33, 64, 103, 178, 313–314, 398 Savile, Jimmy 149, 152, 154 saviour narratives 127–130 Sayad, Abdelmalek 99, 103–104 Sayadaw Ashin Daywaindarbhivamsa 294 Sayyid, S. 61, 200 scapegoating 353 Scarbrough Report (1947) 176 Schedule 7 stops Terrorism Act 2000 (UK) 343–344, 345 Schengen zone 367 Schewick, Barbara 45 Schiappa, Marlène 119 schools 44 scientific development 242 Scotland 161–171; BME survey 165; ethnoreligious diversity and discrimination 168; institutional discrimination 165; Muslim ethnic groups 163; “national” identity 167–168; post-9/11 discrimination 162–163; public opinion surveys 163; racist incidents 163–164; religiously aggravated offences 164; verbal abuse 167, 168; workplace and job market 165, 166–167 Scottish airports 168–170, 341–342 Scottish Dawn 72 Scottish Muslims 161–162 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2010 (Ormston) 166 Scott, J. W. 113 Sears, R. 78 Second Vatican Council, “Declaration of Nostra Aetate” (1965) 216 Secretariat for Non-Christians, “The attitude of the Church towards the followers of other religions.” (1984) 216 sectarian violence 394 secularism: Belgium 129; breaking taboos 61; multicultural liberal democracies 267; see also laïcité (French secularism) securitisation of Muslims 169 security agendas 18, 175, 180, 181 security behavioural impacts 90 self-censorship 184 426

self-conscious strategies 320 self-disciplining 180–181 self-silencing 346 ‘self-stereotyping’ 85 Selod, Saher 13 Senzai, F. 301 separation policies 46 Serafeim, Metropolitan of Piraeus 203, 204, 205, 206 Sesto San Giovanni (Milan, Italy) 370 Le Seuil 103 7/7 attacks (UK) 1, 27, 55, 178, 357, 400 sexual abuse 152 sexual exploitation 65 sexual violence 153–154 Shah, Asad 394 Shahghasemi, E. 48 Shakir, Zaid 257 Shar’ia law 25–26, 292 Shepard, Matthew 85 Shia-influenced strikes (1982–1983) 101, 103 ‘shifty’ looking people 345–346 Shirazi, F. 270 Shryock, Andrew 287 Siamese empire 291 Siddiqui, A. 176 signs of non-cooperation/questioning/challenging authorities 347 signs of vulnerability to radicalization see Prevent policy (UK) Silicon Valley 252–253 Silvestri, S. 346 Sirin, Selcuk 254, 301, 317, 319 Skogan, W. G. 348 Smith, Cyril 152 social actors 321 social aliens 169 social discrimination 43 social exclusion 266 social identity 79 social identity theory (SIT) 72, 85 ‘social inclusion’ 399 socially power-balanced relationships 164 social media: marketing extremism 376; “othering” Arabs and Muslims 299; regulation of extremist speech 380; representation of Islam and Muslims 43; see also online abuse social media forums 382 social representation theory (SRT) 74–75 social responsibility and insensitivity 75 Society of Editors (SoE) 326, 333 socio-economic class 54 socio-economic factors 78–79 SoE interviews 329, 331, 332, 333 solidarity 306–307 Soli Deo Basta organisation 212 Solomos, J. 400

Index

Somali students 301 Sommier, Melodie 270 sources/media relationships 330–331 South Asian men 168 Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) 241, 245 Southern Thailand conflict 292 South Yorkshire Police 151 Spain 287, 288–289 special branch desks 344 “Special Registration Program” (USA) 253 Spencer, Robert 16; The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam 65 ‘spin’ 379 ‘spirals of polarization’ 375 ‘spirals of violence’ 375 Spivak, G. C. 127, 318 ‘split personality syndrome’ (Zine) 320–321 SPOT (Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques) 345 Srebrenica Genocide Memorial Day (2013) 404 Sri Lanka 288, 294 Stadtkewitz, Rene 365 Stanko, E. A. 153–154 Stasi Commission 112, 114 state practices 370 state responses to hate crimes 380 state surveillance 147, 303 Statistics Canada 282 Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (1999) 385, 386, 390, 392 stereotyping 279, 332 stigmatising Muslims 28, 303–304, 318 Stocker, P. 358 Stone, Roger 149 stop-and-frisks and surveillance of Muslims (NYPD) 303 Stop Funding Hate campaign 381 Stop Hate UK (organisation) 392 Stop Islamization of America 65, 240 stops and searches 168, 344 “Stop Trump” protest (UIC 2016) 306 Strache, Heinz-Christian 365 ‘strategic essentialism’ (Spivak) 318 Strategy Board 393 Strathclyde University Muslim Student Association 163 Strauss, A. 377 Straw, Jack 398–399, 406 structural racism 32–40 students 175–185; activism for Palestinian rights 260; diversity 178; effects of immigration ban 303; gendered Islamophobia 196; monitored by parents 181; racism and discrimination of ethnic minorities 178; religious needs 178; reporting Islamophobic incidents 194; wearing the hijab 300; see also Muslim students; Prevent policy (UK)

‘Students Not Suspects’ (Black Students’ Campaign) 191 student societies 179 students’ unions 189, 192 subtraction 369 subtractive utopia 369–370 Sultan of Sulu 289 The Sun 153, 326 ‘The Sunbaker’ (Dupain) 264 Sunday Night show (Channel 7) 271 Surf Lifesaving Australia 265 Surf Lifesaving burkini 265 surveillance: airports 344–345; students 184 surveys 49–50 ‘suspectification’ 143 ‘suspicious’ behaviour reporting 344 Sussex Hate Crime Project 86–91 Swann Report (1985) 178 Swann, W. 79, 80, 81 Sweden 65, 66 Swedish Democrats 365 Swet Shop Boys 340 Switzerland 370 Sydney hostage crisis (2014) 361 Symon, Emma Kate 271–272 Syrian refugees 241, 243–244, 248, 327 T5 (Swet Shop Boys) 340 Tackling Religious Discrimination (Hepple and Choudhury) 399 Taggart, Paul 365 Taguieff, Pierre-André 115 Tajfel, H. 72 Taj Madina mosque (Dundee) 168 Tak Bai massacre (Thailand 2004) 292–293 Taliban 65 Tatars 227 Tatchell, Peter 394 taxi drivers 154–155 Tayler, Jeffrey 67 teachers 143, 300 teaching immigrant languages 103 Teesside University, Centre for Fascist, Anti-fascist and Post-fascist Studies (CFAPS) 358, 359–360 Teitelbaum, J. F. 381 Teli, Mairah 246 Tell MAMA data 66, 355, 358, 359, 360, 391 Tell MAMA organisation 356, 392–394 ‘tell-tale’ signs of radicalisation 315, 406 terrorism: and anti-Muslim attacks 302; impact of anxieties 27–29; and Islam 27, 205, 218; reasons for violent extremism 315 “terror-prone” countries 249 Thai-Buddhist nationalism 293 Thailand 291–294; anti-Muslim Buddhist fundamentalist movement 293–294; drugs wars 292; identity cards 293; indiscriminate violence 427

Index

292–293; mosques 293; Muslim insurgencies 286, 292; Muslims mistrusting Buddhists 292; othering Muslims 293; Shar’ia laws 292; see also Malay Muslims Thai superiority 291–292 Thaksin Shinawartha 292 Thatcherism 33 Thatcher, Margaret 353 Theoharis, J. 303 ‘theological hierarchy structures’ 393 ‘thick professionalism’ (‘intuition’) 345 ‘third force’ of sources 330 third space thesis (Bhabha) 316 Thomas, L. 346 Thompson, D. 155 Thrace (Greece) 200 threat narratives 127–130 thrill seeking hate crimes 72–73 Tibi, Bassam 219 The Times 148 Tobio, M. 76 Todd, Emmanuel, Who is Charlie? 118 tolerant approaches 101 Toronto Star 280 totalitarian political ambitions 61 Touraine, Alain 114 Trabelsi, Attika 115 traditional forms of racism 326 traditional Islamophobia 44–45 ‘transferred culpability’ 391 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) 345 travel bans 58–59, 276, 302–303, 343, 346 travelling less frequently 346 Travis, A. 315 Treaty on European Union (TEU): Art. 2 232; Art. 4(3) 232; Art. 7(1) 226 Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU): Art. 78 (3) 232; Art. 80 232 ‘trigger’ events 355, 360, 375, 387 Trojan Horse affair 44 “Trojan horses” (Trump) 241, 244; see also Syrian refugees Trudeau, Justin 280 Trump, Donald John: anti-Muslim political rhetoric 241; call to ban all Muslims 327; effects in Canada 277; essentialization 243; executive orders 248–249; explaining election 78; hate crimes during candidacy and election 248; Islamophobia 276; mainstreaming Islamophobia 67; Manchester Arena attack (2017) 71; and marginalized US communities 306; Muslim travel bans 58–59, 276, 302–303, 343, 346; post-election attacks on mosques 247–248; “Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Entry into the United States” (Executive Order) 244; rhetoric of hate 277; terrorism by his “fans” 275; Twitter feeds 276–279 428

Trump vs. Hawaii 303 Turkey 204–205, 206 Turner, J. 72 Turner, R. 74 20 Minutes newspaper 268 Twitter 358, 376, 382 ‘two-step flow’ model (Katz) 379 2001 Riots report (Cantle) 387 Tyrer, D. 178 Uddin, Tharam 247 UK Independence Party (UKIP) 148, 354–355 UK Standards Agency 356 ‘ummah’ (community) 85, 328 “undercover” Muslims 305 UNIA (Interfederal Centre for Equal Opportunities) 123, 128, 131 United Kingdom: airports ‘intelligence-led’ profiling 343; anti-Muslim hegemonic narrative 39–40; anti-Muslim sentiment 157; backlash after 9/11 attacks 353; census (2011) 50; CONTEST counter terrorism strategy 175; counter-radicalisation strategy 315; ‘counter terrorism’ initiatives 147; criminal justice system 91–94; debates on migration, terrorism, and threats to national identity 376; far-right groups 359; hate crime after 9/11 attacks 386–387; hate crime data 355–356, 389–390; hate-motivated crimes 85; interpersonal Islamophobia 51; ‘Islamification’ 36–37; Islamophobia 85, 147; Islamophobic hate crimes 84–94; Islamophobic policy 52–55; media 167; minority communities over-policed and under-protected 150; Muslim community 392–393; Muslim presence 177; national security agenda 314–315; natural rate of racism 40; Oriental and Area Studies programmes 177; patterns of Islamophobia 55; religious hate crime data 390; UNCRED report (2016) 355–356, 358; universal framework for hate crime 389; universities 188–196; universities ‘spying’ on students 406; use of Shar’ia law 25–26; weaponising free speech 66; see also British Muslims United Kingdom Action Committee on Islamic Affairs (UKACIA), Muslims and the Law in Multi-Faith Britain 398 United Kingdom legislation: Anti-Discrimination (Amendment) Act 1994 398; Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 400; British Nationality Act 1948 177; Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 400; Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (CTSA) 175, 179, 184, 190–191, 314; Criminal Justice Act 2003 400; Equality Act 2006 401; Equality Act 2010 343, 345; Human Rights Act 1998 399; Race Relations Acts (RRA) 105, 177, 398, 400;

Index

Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 400; Terrorism Act 2000 314, 343; Terrorism Act 2006 378 United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (UNCERD) 355–356, 358 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 244 United Nations Resolution 16–18 on Combatting Religious Intolerance 388 United States (USA): alt-right (far-right activists) 379; anti-Muslim hate groups (2010-2017) 241; anti-Shar’ia campaigns 240; Arabophobia 252; border security practices 341; “civilization jihad” 240; Countering Violent Extremism policies 302; crimes against women with hijab 245–246; cross-racial affiliations 257; educational epistemologies of superiority 241–242; hate crimes 241, 245–248; higher education 301–306; ideological Islamophobia 51; immigration ban 303; international students 303; interpersonal Islamophobia 51; invasion of Iraq 242; Islamophobia 240–241, 252, 287; Islamophobia movement 240–241, 246–247; Islamophobic policy 52–55; “Know Your Rights” workshops 253; mass shootings 327; media characterizing Muslim majority countries 242; media coverage of Islam 327; midterm elections (2010) 241; military training 243; murders as nativist and anti-Muslim 247; Orientalism 37; PATRIOT Act (2001) 252, 253; patterns of Islamophobia 55; Philippines 289; presidential campaign (2015–2016) 241; pro-Israel narrative 259–260; public schools 300; refugee vetting process 244; schools 298–307; Trump effect 276; as “unwelcoming or unsafe” 303 universities 188–196; banning hijabs 113n6; and colonialism 176; counter terrorism agenda 175; institutionalized Islamophobia 178; ISoc activities 181; violence and discrimination 189; see also education; Prevent policy (UK) University of California, Berkeley 240 University of Cambridge 316 University of Exeter, European Muslim Research Centre 354 University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) 306 US Government Accountability Office 345 ustaz (religious scholars) 292 utopia of radical right 364–368, 369 U Wirathu 294 Vadim, Roger 263 Valentin, Vincent 112 Valls, Manuel 114–115, 270; La laïcité en face 114 vandalism 87 Van Dijk, T. A. 329, 331, 332

veiling: and female agency 112–113; gender oppression 267; as a political statement 115; re-claiming from Islamic patriarchy 318; as a security threat 127–128; see also burqas; niqabs (face-veils) verbal abuse 87, 137, 167 Versi, M. 315 Verviers (Belgium) 129 vestimentary practices 127 ‘vicarious victimisation’ 89 ‘Vichy de l’intégration’ (Politis) 103 victimisation 84 victims of hate crimes 357, 358, 391 victim support groups 392 Victorian Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal (VCAT) 270 videotaping assaults 75 Villeneuve-Loubet (France) 271 violence: ideological motivations 39; and Muslims 28; Orientalist inspired narratives 127; Rotherham 156; triggering responses 359; in universities and colleges 189; see also cumulative extremism violent extremism 33, 315 violent intent of terrorists 38–39 The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam (Spencer) 65 Visegrad Group (V4) 232–233 visibly identifiable Muslims: recognized for ethnicity 178; social interactions 171; stigmatisation and exclusion 166; working with other Muslims 305–306 visibly Muslim students 304, 306 visibly Muslim women 195, 196; see also Muslim women voluntary segregation 91 volunteerism 258 vulnerability to radicalization 175, 181 vulnerability to sexual abuse 154 Wacquant, L. 169 Walklate, S. 346 Wallerstein, I. M. 327–328 Wallonia (Belgium) 124, 126 Walters, M. 375 War on Terror 33, 253 war repatriations 230 Warsi, Sayeeda Hussain, Baroness Warsi 314, 358, 402 Washington Post 149 Waters, Anne-Marie 65, 355 Watson, N. 401 ‘waves of harm’ (Iganski) 85 ‘weaponising’ Islamophobia 353 weaponising of free speech 66 Weaver, M. 358 ‘we don’t do god’ 399 429

Index

Weller, P. 398, 401; Religious Discrimination in England and Wales 399 Werbner, Pnina 60 West and a post-West future 35 West Cornwall child abuse (2010) 151–152 Western globalised capitalist hegemon 35 ‘Western model’ 229 Western normative constructs 127 Wheaton College (US) 302 ‘White backlash’ 99, 104–107 white elites as sources 331 White Eurocentric feminism 127 white-European female victims 66 white men abusing children 152 white news production 331 white on Muslim violence 244–245 White Paper on Commonwealth Immigrants (1965) 400 White Paper on racial discrimination (1975) 398 white supremacy 241–242 white working-class young men 36 Who is Charlie? (Todd) 118 Wiedlitzka, S. 375 Wilders, Geert 16, 354, 365 Williams, Rowan 43, 44 Winter, A. 64, 66 Wiśniewski, Ludwik 215 Witek, Elżbieta 230 withholding information and cooperation from authorities 348 Wodak, R. 24 Wojtyła, Karol (Pope John Paul II) 216, 217

430

Wolfreys, J. 112, 116 women: female agency 112–113; sexual violence against 153–154; visibly Muslim 195, 196; see also Muslim women Women Against Rape (WAR) 153 women-only swimming 269 women’s rights 65, 391 Woodhead, L., Religion or Belief 401 Woodlock, Rachel, Fear of Muslims? 357 World Buddhist Outstanding Leader Award 294 X, Malcolm 240 xenophobia (xenophobie) 13, 42–43, 47, 277 xenophobic attacks 200 Yahoo French News 268 Ye’or, Bat 126, 266 Yiannopoulos, Milo 67 Yilmaz, Ferruh 64, 314 #YouAreWelcomeHere campaign 303 YouGov poll (UK) 327 young British Muslims 147 Yousaf, Humza 168 YouTube 382 Yugoslav war 202n16 Zadarko, Krzysztof 217 Zanetti, Aheda 263, 269 Zempi, I. 85, 91 Zine, J. 300–301, 320–321, 341 Žižek, S. 106 Zúquete, J. P. 12