A new report spells out the growing demonisation of and violence against Muslims.
A report on Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate crime in the UK from the European Muslim Research Centre confirms much of what was intimated in its first, slim report in January this year. The new report, over 200 pages in length, concludes that anti-Muslim hate crime is rife and Muslims face a threat of violence and intimidation from both politically-motivated attackers and gangs and individuals not aligned to extremist groups. In fact ‘the influence of mainstream political commentators poses a threat of political violence’. The majority of attacks are carried out by those with no allegiance to the British National Party or the English Defence League (EDL) against Muslims, Islamic institutions and mosques. They appear to have been incited by the very negative portrayal of Muslims in the media.
Specific areas of concern are underlined in this report (authored again by Robert Lambert and Jonathan Githens-Mazer): mosques in isolated communities are vulnerable to attack; abuse of and assaults on women have increased; street violence is prevalent; demonstrations by the EDL spread fear and anxiety; there is serious under-reporting of violent attacks by victims. The report goes on to examine the demonisation in the media of Muslim leaders, what it terms ‘institutional Islamophobia’, and political discrimination against Muslim organisations.
It asks the government as a matter of urgency to tackle anti-Muslim hate crime and to fund community groups already having to support its victims. It calls ‘Islamophobia and discrimination’ the coalition government’s ‘litmus test’ of fairness and social justice and urges it to promote inclusion via dialogue with ‘community representatives’.
Related links
Read an IRR News story: Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate crime in London
Rubbish. The country is overcrowded as it is and labour just continued to allow them to pour in. 98% of all new jobs created has gone to overseas workers and you wonder why the indigenous of this country are so angry. There is not the housing nor infrastructure for these people yet they still arrive in their hundreds of thousands.
The Institute of Race Relations report: ‘Racial Violence: The Buried Issue”. This is a very poor piece of work. Given the analysis techniques used, the most the IRR could ever claim is that 89 per cent of cases of racist violence that are reported by the news media are of attacks on ethnic minority people. It is therefore absurd for the IRR to claim that the report shows that “89 per cent of all perpetrators of racial violence are definitely known to be white” [page 10]. Quite obviously no such claim can be made. The IRR makes no mention of how many cases of racist attacks go unreported, nor (obviously) does it mention the victim-ethnicity of those unreported cases. The IRR goes on to claim that its report is “the first time that a national picture of racial violence has been drawn”. This is simply not true. In fact, from crime data collected by the Home Office, the BCS and the Ministry of Justice, it has consistently been shown that approximately 60 per cent of all victims of racist violence are white. I therefore find it especially disturbing that the IRR has ‘baulked out’ the report with material whose only effect will be to further intensify hatred against white people. What are the IRR’s intentions? Tony Shell 26th June 2010