All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims

All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims The inquiry into a working definition of Islamophobia Report on the inquiry into A working definition of Islamophobia / anti-Muslim hatred All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims Report on the inquiry into a working definition of Islamophobia / anti-Muslim hatred 3 The All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims was launched in 2017. The cross party group of parliamentarians is co-chaired by Anna Soubry MP and Wes Streeting MP. The Group was established to highlight the aspirations and challenges facing British Muslims; to celebrate the contributions of Muslim communities to Britain and to investigate prejudice, discrimination and hatred against Muslims in the UK. appgbritishmuslims.org facebook.com/APPGBritMuslims @APPGBritMuslims Report on the inquiry into A working definition of Islamophobia / anti-Muslim hatred All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims Contents Foreword by Dominic Grieve QC 6 Foreword by Anna Soubry and Wes Streeting 7 Executive Summary 9 Introduction 12 Chapter 1 Literature review 19 Chapter 2 - Arriving at a working definition 23 Chapter 3 - Our findings 27 An INDEX to Tackle Islamophobia 51 Chapter 4 - Community consultation findings 52 Conclusion 56 Acknowledgements 60 Appendix 1 - Written evidence 61 Appendix 2 - Oral evidence sessions 62 Appendix 3 - Community consultation participants 63 Appendix 4 - Islamophobia / Anti Muslim hatred questionnaire 64 Bibliography 66 5 Foreword s Chair of the Citizens UK Commission on Islam, Participation and Public Life, I travelled round the country hearing evidence as to the extent to which this desirable goal was taking place and as to the reasons why it was not happening Ain the way many Muslims and others wished. The overwhelming message that the Commission received was that Islamophobia was playing a major role in undermining integration and community cohesion. Much of it is subtle and goes unreported but its impact is no less corrosive for its rarely coming to the notice of wider society. This is why I greatly welcome this report, which makes an important contribution to the debate as to how Islamophobia can best be addressed. It is well researched and can give all of us food both for thought and positive action. That action is needed I have no doubt. As a country we owe it to both ourselves collectively and to our Muslim neighbours and fellow citizens to work together to build our common good. Discrimination, prejudice and hatred damage us all and we have to work together to challenge it. Dominic Grieve QC MP Report on the inquiry into A working definition of Islamophobia / anti-Muslim hatred All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims Foreword s co-chairs of the all party parliamentary on British Muslims and Islamophobia, ‘Islamophobia: group on British Muslims, we are often a challenge for us all’. The occasion of the anniversary, asked, being that neither of us is a and the follow up report by the Runnymede Trust Muslim, why we lead this group and what last year, highlight the extent to which Islamophobia our motives are. It may seem prosaic to remains a palpable concern among British Muslims point out that our motives are a deep and when it comes to inequality and discrimination. Aprofound commitment to equality for all citizens; Across policy domains, from employment, education irrespective of their race, religion, gender, age, sexual and criminal justice to housing, healthcare and hate orientation or disability, to champion the valuable crime, Islamophobia has a significant negative impact contribution British Muslims make to our society, on the life chances and quality of life enjoyed by and to investigate prejudice, discrimination and British Muslims. hatred against Muslims in the UK. Some of the costs of inequality and discrimination In our first report, “A Very Merry Muslim Christmas” faced by Muslims were presented in the commendable we drew attention to the fantastic work done by report of the Citizens UK Commission on Islam in British Muslims over the Christmas period. Muslim- British Public Life, chaired by the Rt. Hon. Dominic led charities and the huge contribution they make to Grieve QC, ‘The Missing Muslims: unlocking British civil society and social welfare in local communities Muslim potential for the benefit of all’. across the country was the subject of our second Our impetus for conducting an inquiry into a working report “Faith as the Fourth Emergency Service”. definition of Islamophobia/anti-Muslim hatred In this, our third report, we look at a subject that derived from the twin observations of seeing equality deserves our urgent attention: Islamophobia. rise up the political agenda but Islamophobia remain In recent years, we have seen British Muslims conspicuously absent or demonstrably relegated make huge strides from the first Muslim Home as a subject of interest. Twenty years on from the Secretary and Mayor of London, to the first female promulgation of the term Islamophobia, we can Muslim minister to stand at the Despatch box in no longer ignore or deny its impact on our British the House of Commons, following in the footsteps Muslim communities. of the first Muslim female in Cabinet and minister Let us be clear, Islamophobia is rooted in racism at the Despatch box in the upper chamber. These and its victims are not just Muslims but also those few examples demonstrate the huge potential for who are perceived to be Muslims. Its effects are Muslims to flourish in Britain. But as the London seen in individual behaviours and institutional mayoral campaign in 2016 shows, such illustrious processes. Whether it is Muslim women who are examples are only one side of the story. denied job opportunities because they wear a The year 2017 marked the twentieth anniversary of the headscarf, gurdwaras that are defaced because they seminal report of the Runnymede Trust’s Commission are mistakenly identified as mosques, or Muslim 7 students who fail to secure entry offers from Russell victim group itself - and the meaning attached to the Group universities, the effects of Islamophobia are word, exemplified through demonstrable examples, real and measurable. are necessary if bigotry directed at particular sections of our society are to be widely understood and The normalisation of Islamophobia has long passed challenged using every available lever in Government, the ‘dinner table test’. It now presides in such ‘banter’ politics, policymaking, media, society and education. as ridiculing Muslim women’s dress to draw parallels with letter boxes and bank robbers, and in political We hope our working definition will be adopted disputes that are aggravated using glib tropes of suicide by Government, statutory agencies, civil society vests. The elision of Islamophobia into everyday organisations and principally, British Muslim bigoted discourse is not only indicative of how low the communities who have been central to this enterprise threshold has fallen, it is, more alarmingly, redolent and whose valuable contributions have significantly of its diffusion to the point of evincing conscious and shaped our thinking on this subject. unconscious biases against Muslims. We further hope that the adoption of this working The Oxford English Dictionary states that a definition definition will signal to Britain’s Muslims that we, is ‘The act or process of defining; a statement of the as parliamentarians, will not be resigned to their meaning of a word or the nature of a thing.’ being missed off or missing from our political, social, cultural, civic and economic life and that we will In pursuing this inquiry to arrive at a working actively tackle Islamophobia so that British Muslims definition, we have attempted to engage the ‘process can thrive and continue to attain new heights long of defining’ through widespread consultation with into the future. parliamentarians, experts, lawyers, community activists and victim-led organisations so that we could confidently propose a working definition which Anna Soubry and Wes Streeting serves to give meaning to the word and nature of the Co-chairs of the APPG on British Muslims. thing we call Islamophobia. We know all too well from the anti-Semitism debate engulfing the Labour party over the summer that both the process of defining - one which does not undermine or marginalise the viewpoints of the Report on the inquiry into A working definition of Islamophobia / anti-Muslim hatred All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims Executive Summary year ago the Runnymede Trust Britain, with more than half saying they felt this “very published its twentieth anniversary strongly”. In another survey in 2015, 95% of Muslims report on Islamophobia. The report, said they feel loyal to Britain.1 marking two decades since its seminal And religion, as we discovered in our previous publication, Islamophobia: A Challenge report, Faith as the Fourth Emergency Service, plays for Us All, highlighted some of the an important part in the lives and identity of most Achanges in process, impact and outcomes relating Muslims in Britain. As shown in a wide-ranging report to Islamophobia which continued to affect British by Ipsos Mori reviewing survey research on Muslims, Muslim communities in a negative way. The follow on a strong sense of religious identity sits alongside a report with its title, Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for strong sense of British identity with Muslims more Us All, encapsulates the persistence of the corrosive likely than the British public

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