By: Azril Mohd Amin (ABIM's Exco)
[is pursuing a Human Rights postgraduate course at the School of Advance Study, University of London]

The word Islamophobia was first used in print in 1991 and was defined in the 1997 Runnymede Trust report as `unfounded hostility towards Islam, and therefore fear or dislike of all or most Muslims'. Islamophobia refers to anti-Muslim prejudice and racism, which may be directed against individuals or groups because of their actual or perceived religious background or identification. It results in unfair discrimination and harassment, and the exclusion of individuals or groups from the mainstream areas of social, economic or political life.Anti-Muslim prejudice and racism is based upon claims that Islam is an ‘inferior’ religion and a threat to the prevailing values of society. However, Islamophobia is not restricted to a hatred of Islam, but also prejudice and hatred directed against people who are or who are perceived to be Muslims. As such, Islamophobia cannot be separated from the problem of anti-Muslim racism.

 

Islamophobia has been on the increase and the more so since the fall of the Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War, which saw a rise in nationalism, has particularly affected Muslims because Islam, particularly in Western Europe, is an immigrant Islam. Attacks on Muslims in Europe have become stronger as nationalism is too often anti-immigrant. It was feared by many of the European countries that since the demise of the Soviet Empire, Islam has ‘emerged from its shadow to become enemy number one’.

In recent years, the problem of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim prejudice and racism has become an increasingly widespread feature of British social life. In certain quarters, an unacceptable and unfounded association has been made between human rights violations, terrorist networks and the Muslim communities and asylum seekers present in Britain. This has led to an inflammation of racial and religious tensions in some towns and cities, and may have contributed to the resurgence of extreme far-right political parties. All of these developments have resulted in an increased level of fear within Muslim and other communities.

In England, an incident in the south cathedral city of Chichester a few years ago became one of the signals of Islamophobia in the country. The outcry took place when local Muslims wanted to turn a disused church into a mosque. The Bishop of Chichester was in favour, but Christians wrote vehement letters to the local newspaper and the plan had to be dropped.

Another incident took place in Bradford, where Muslims - 10 per cent of the population, the highest concentration in any British city - first came from Pakistan in the 1950s and '60s, encouraged by the UK government to fill the jobs vacant in Bradford's once 'dark, satanic' mills. Today those mills provide less than a quarter of the city's manufacturing employment; such has been the decline in the British wool industry over the last 40 years.

It wasn't the jobs lost in the satanic mills so much as Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses which most upset the Muslims. Almost ten years ago, they gathered in front of the city hall and, in a dramatic gesture, ceremoniously burnt the book. The author’s portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad was, in their eyes, blasphemous. Their action became a defining moment in British community relations, provoking an anti-Muslim backlash.

Today, Bradford's Muslims have put the Rushdie Affair behind them. Nothing can be gained from revisiting the ghost. Many of them agree that 'it is a matter of the past' and they have realised that their outcry was counterproductive; generating a storm of protest from what Muslims called 'the fundamentalist literary lobby'. The city's Muslims presently portray a picture of being far more relaxed about their role in the wider community. They are proud to be Yorkshiremen. There is a family and community-based tradition here and many similarities with the Asian culture of community. There is a good atmosphere in Bradford and people take pride in it.

But there are downsides. The far-right National Front still distributes anti-immigrant leaflets. And with most of Bradford's Muslims living in inner-city areas, some of the schools have an almost entirely Muslim attendance, giving the children no chance of interacting with non-Muslims.

The reaction of Chichester's Christians and the Rushdie affair illustrated a growing Islamophobia in the West which worries Muslims deeply. It has since been exacerbated by the Gulf War against Afghanistan and Iraq, the US anti-terrorism war and the portrayal of 'Islamic fundamentalism' in the Western media, which has turned it into a pejorative term and xenophobia in the Western press towards Islam in general.

In the light of such concerns, the Runnymede Trust, an independent agency which looks into racial and cultural issues, had set up the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia in 1996. Its 18 commissioners included the Bishop of London and Rabbi Julia Neuberger, as well as Dr Zaki Badawi, a famous Muslim scholar, the Cambridge Muslim academic Akbar Ahmed, and Imam Abduljalil Sajid from Brighton.

They had in 1997 published their first report, Islamophobia: a challenge for us all, the first study of its kind in the world. It aimed to highlight the dangers which Islamophobia creates for Muslim communities, 'and therefore the well-being of society as a whole', as well as to counter Western assumptions that Islam is a totally monolithic faith, lacking any pluralism or internal debate.

The Western press in particular bears a great deal of the guilt for Islamophobia. The media is now very cautious when it talks about the Jews. It is reasonably cautious when it talks about the blacks. But the Muslims are fair game. The media too easily paints the Muslim world as a single monolith. But such 'Islamic' regimes as Saudi Arabia, with its apparent archaic system of justice, and even the Iran of Ayatollah Khomeini, who issued a fatwa (religious decree) against Rushdie calling for his death, are no more representative of Islam than Benjamin Netanyahu is of all Jewish opinion.

The media 'demonises Islam'. After the Oklahoma bombing, for instance, the world's media immediately speculated that a Muslim was responsible, without checking the facts. One can understand, therefore, Muslim frustration when tabloid headlines scream about Pakistan's 'Muslim bomb'. Britain's and America's nuclear arsenal would hardly be called Judeo-Christian.

There have been significant examples of British Muslims’ initiatives to counter Islamophobia. One approach is to highlight 'best practice' where things are going right between the communities. Outstanding examples of the different faiths working well together include the city council’s initiative in setting-up the Bradford Interfaith Education Centre, in response to the religious education needs of all the city's faith communities. Such initiative is still unique in Britain. Muslims have also welcomed plans by Bradford's Anglican cathedral to celebrate special occasions by including all the faith communities. Hardly headline stuff, but important for being where it matters most: at the grassroots.

Another commendable initiative to counter Islamophobia can be seen in Brighton, along the south coast from Chichester, where Imam Sajid has founded the Ethnic Minorities Representative Council that brought together some 70 local organisations representing 58 languages and cultural groups. It acts as a voice for all the minorities in negotiations with the police and local government, and includes projects for dealing with racial harassment and for language interpretation. It was their sincerity of objective in working together that brought fruitful results. But this never happened without the reconciliation between the Muslims and the followers of other faiths, without forgiving and forgetting the past. The starting point was to recognise that mistakes have been made and to learn from those mistakes.

This model needs to be taken up nationally. Muslims especially suffer from discrimination in employment. The city has 10 per cent unemployment overall, but among Muslims it is 35 per cent. Imam Sajid tells of a Rotherham company employing 1,500 people which put up a notice saying Muslims should not apply for a job. The Commission for Racial Equality took the company to court but lost.

Such Islamophobia is also a reflection of xenophobia towards immigrants and anyone who appears to be different. Then they become scapegoats, especially at times of high unemployment and competition for jobs.

Until now, Muslims still campaign for a change in British law, to make such anti-Muslim discrimination and incitement to religious hatred an offence. No one can attack Sikhs because they are regarded as a racial group. But Muslims are not and therefore don't have the same legal protection. As one Muslim puts it: 'If a person in the shivering cold has a blanket and other people are shivering without a blanket, it is an equality to provide another blanket.'

A more recent report by the Open Society Institute, published on November 22 2004, suggests that Muslims will feel a deeper sense of belonging to British society if key legal and political institutions understand and accommodate their central concerns.

The Report highlights “how big the challenge is” in turning the vision of an inclusive society into reality. The OSI report, entitled Muslims in the UK: policy for engaged citizens, confirmed the standpoint taken by many Islamic organisations that religion is a more important aspect of identity for British Muslims than ethnicity. It focuses on four key policy areas, where Muslims are particularly disadvantaged, in employment, education, the criminal justice system and equality and community cohesion.

The Report, however, confirmed that Muslims in Britain suffered soaring levels of Islamophobia and discrimination based upon their faith rather than the colour of their skin and called on the Government to do more to tackle the discrimination. The findings recommended that policy would be better aimed to meet the specific needs of Muslims if they were treated as a religious group rather than through the lens of ethnic affiliation. It also called for Government policy to use faith identities as a positive resource, which should be respected and acknowledged. As an example, it proposed that Arabic should be offered at schools as a foreign language and that history studies include Muslim civilization.

It is submitted that the West would be far less Islamophobic if it also gives more recognition to the common historic roots between the monotheistic religions - 'the people of the Book' - on which so much of Western culture is based. Jews, Muslims and Christians all trace their roots to the Biblical patriarch Abraham. But, the West rarely acknowledges Islam's contribution to its culture, from astronomy and algebra to art and architecture, trade and commerce.

Perhaps what Muslims in Britain need urgently now is to push the envelope of Islamic thought, jurisprudence and intra Islamic discourse to embrace and encompass the intricacies of the dynamics associated with the Muslim presence in the West. Such an idea has been well deliberated by the famous contemporary scholar, Dr. Tariq Said Ramadan in his recent book, ‘Western Muslims and the future of Islam’.

British Muslims in particular have a lot to learn from the book as it dedicates a special attention towards the broader meaning of the Shar‘iah as a “the path that leads to the spring,” and the values and lifestyle it seeks to promote. Some of the inferences of this axiomatic approach are particularly interesting and deserve special mention.

The Shar‘iah is not to be understood in its usual narrow terms as a collection of laws and penal codes, but more broadly as a complete way of living faithfully in any situation as willing and free slaves of Allah. Viewed in this manner, the Shar‘iah is to be translated into reality wherever and whenever a Muslim might find himself, including here in Britain. In order to bridge the gap between timeless principles and the flux of normal life, the scholars of Islam have developed a portfolio of instruments (Maqasid, Usul ul-Fiqh, etc) to assist in the implementation of the Shar‘iah.

A corollary to this constellation of principles and methodological guidelines is what Dr. Ramadan calls the “Principle of Integration.” The simple yet enabling proposal is that all that is good and beneficial from other schemes is integrated into and becomes part of the Shari‘ah. Specifically for Muslims in Britain and the West, this principle provides them with an opportunity to evolve from their jurisprudential status as “minorities,” to which Fiqh ul-Aqalliyyat, the Fiqh of minorities, is applied by contemporary scholars, to become full and participatory citizens of the land.

The result of this analytical principle is an important change of the psyche and mindset of Muslim individuals, institutions and communities. This transformed outlook will engender a creative and constructive spirit, freed from the constant tensions relating to identity, belonging and loyalty, which are of a major occurrence especially amongst British Muslims.

Last but not least, there is also an urgent need for all faiths in Britain to come together in common cause over 'quality of life' issues such as environmental concerns, human rights and freedom of conscience, and caring for the weak and sick. Muslims have a strong work ethic and family life at a time when family values are under threat in the West. Muslims' commitment to their religious observance is an example to other religions, especially as people hunger for spiritual values. Islam, in common with all faiths, retains moral principles which are absolute and which were also very much a tradition of European and Christian culture.

For myself, I remember being moved, some years ago, by the story - as told in the feature movie The Message - about the followers of Prophet Muhammad SAW who were persecuted by the Quraish tribe in Mecca. They fled to Abyssinia (Ethiopia), and were given refuge there by the Negus, the Coptic Christian King. Welcoming them, he said, 'The difference between you and me is no wider than the gap between these paving stones.'

Not all Christians, or indeed Western nations, have taken such a generous approach towards Muslims since then. Many Muslims still hope they will - despite the anti-Western rhetoric of some Islamic regimes.
As the Christian author of The Muslim Mind, Charis Waddy, puts it: 'Welcoming the stranger in our midst is one of the most urgent needs of the modern world.' ______________________________________________________________________
Azril Mohd Amin is pursuing a Human Rights postgraduate course at the School of Advance Study, University of London.