A 20th-anniversary report Islamophobia Still a challenge for us all Edited by Farah Elahi and Omar Khan Runnymede: Intelligence 20th-anniversary report This report marks the 20th-year anniversary of Runnymede’s for a Multi-ethnic Britain 1997 report Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All. Part I represents Runnymede’s position, including 10 recommendations to address Islamophobia, Part II outlines Runnymede is the UK’s the evidence on Islamophobia in various social domains, and leading independent thinktank Part III includes differing perspectives on how to understand on race equality and race Islamophobia. The latter chapters present the views of the individual chapter authors and not necessarily those of the relations. Through high- Runnymede Trust. quality research and thought leadership, we: Acknowledgements This research was made possible with the generous assistance of the Aziz Foundation, Global Dialogue, Joseph • Identify barriers to race Rowntree Charitable Trust and Unbound Philanthropy, and equality and good race we would like to thank them again for their support. The relations; views expressed in this report are not necessarily those of these funders. • Provide evidence to support action for social We would like to extend our thanks to all our chapter authors change; and case study contributors, Luke Finley for his excellent work on copy-editing this report and Alison Shakspeare for • Influence policy at all her patience in typesetting it. We were also supported by The levels. Bridge Institute, in particular Louis Carserides, who provided a helpful sounding-board throughout the last year. ISBN: 978-1-909546-25-7 Published by Runnymede in November 2017, this document is copyright © Runnymede 2017. Some rights reserved. Open access. Some rights reserved. The Runnymede Trust wants to encourage the circulation of its work as widely as possible while retaining the copyright. The trust has an open access policy which enables anyone to access its content online without charge. Anyone can download, save, perform or distribute this work in any format, including translation, without written permission. This is subject to the terms of the Creative Commons Licence Deed: Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales. Its main conditions are: • You are free to copy, distribute, display and perform the work; • You must give the original author credit; • You may not use this work for commercial purposes; • You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. 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For more information please go to www.creativecommons.org Runnymede St Clement’s Building, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE T 020 7377 9222 E [email protected] www.runnymedetrust.org CONTENTS Foreword ............................................................................................................................................. v Baroness Sayeeda Warsi EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................1 PART I: UNDERSTANDING 1 Introduction: What is Islamophobia? ............................................................................................5 Farah Elahi and Omar Khan 2 Raceing Islamophobia ..................................................................................................................13 Claire Alexander PART II: MAPPING 3 British Muslims: An overview .......................................................................................................17 Serena Hussain 4 Poverty and the labour market ....................................................................................................25 Anthony Heath and Asma Mustafa Case study 1: Khadija ........................................................................................................................30 5 Islamophobia, racism and health ................................................................................................31 James Nazroo and Laia Bécares Case study 2: Layla ............................................................................................................................36 6 Impacts of anti-Muslim hate crime .............................................................................................37 Imran Awan and Irene Zempi Case study 3: Sahar ...........................................................................................................................40 7 Prevent and the normalization of Islamophobia ........................................................................41 Barbara Cohen and Waqas Tufail 8 Framing Muslim integration .........................................................................................................46 Ajmal Hussain and Nasar Meer Case study 4: Adam ...........................................................................................................................50 9 The challenges facing Muslim communities and civic society ................................................51 Chris Allen Case study 5: Tariq .............................................................................................................................55 10 Islamophobia across borders ....................................................................................................56 Ed Pertwee Case Study 6: Jasvir...........................................................................................................................60 11 ‘Everyone is a feminist when it comes to Muslim women’: Gender and Islamophobia ......61 Naaz Rashid PART III: DIFFERENT CONCEPTIONS OF ISLAMOPHOBIA 12 Islamophobia and the Muslim struggle for recognition ..........................................................66 Tariq Modood 13 What’s in a name? .......................................................................................................................69 Shenaz Bunglawala 14 Fear, indifference and engagement: Rethinking the challenge of anti-Muslim bigotry .......73 Kenan Malik 15 Islamophobia and antisemitism ................................................................................................78 David Feldman 16 The Runnymede Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia: A history ................82 Robin Richardson References ........................................................................................................................................85 Notes on contributors ......................................................................................................................97 Islamophobia: Still a challenge for us all v Foreword Baroness Sayeeda Warsi It has been 20 years since the publication of the Runnymede Trust’s report Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All and, as this report highlights, in the last two decades the phenomenon has become more complex and entrenched. In 2011, I said that Islamophobia had passed the dinner-table test. I was speaking about those who display their bigotry overtly, but also those who do so more subtly in the most respectable of settings – middle-class dinner tables. It is this more covert form of Islamophobia, couched in intellectual arguments and espoused by thinktanks, commentators and even politicians, that I have spent the last decade trying to reason with. The rationalizing of bigotry is not new. Discrimination has always been subject to ideological and intellectual justification. Whether this is directed against women, black people, Jewish people or LGBT communities, history shows that it’s always possible to rationalize racism and couch bigotry in ‘acceptable’ arguments; this form of hatred is the most dangerous. Muslims are the latest in a long line caught in the crossfire of these so-called rational arguments. Islamophobia is Britain’s latest bigotry blind spot. Sadly, six years on from my first keynote speech on Islamophobia, there has been little funding for work combating Islamophobia and little political will to tackle the issue. Indeed, decades on from Runnymede’s early attempts to define Islamophobia, the UK government still does not have an agreed, published definition. To challenge Islamophobia the starting point must surely be a definition, a mechanism that leads to accountability. The Runnymede Trust’s definition is a starting point for discussion. We also need to bring together a cross-section of community organizations and individuals, parliamentarians and government, to agree a definition. Hate crime figures for the last 12 months have been the highest since records began, and in one month alone anti-Muslim hate crime increased by 500%. The number of Islamophobic incidents recorded is at an all-time high, and all while it’s accepted that the problem is under-reported. The government’s latest Hate Crime Action Plan accepts that only 25% of actual hate crimes are reported to the police. The plan, published in 2015, made some 80 recommendations, of which many have been either not followed, such as the work with IPSO (the Independent Press Standards Organisation), or not fully implemented. We are simply skimming the surface of the problem. Some within British Muslim communities tasked with tackling this issue have also proved disappointing, seeming to spend more energy on in-fighting than fighting the challenge of Islamophobia. Of all the challenges